Image Credit: Mel Rothenburger

By Mel Rothenburger

ARMCHAIR MAYOR

ROTHENBURGER: 10 big Kamloops ideas that never made it off the drawing boards

Aug 8, 2020 | 6:41 AM

IT TAKES IMAGINATION to build a great city, and that means coming up with a lot of ideas, big ideas.

Some of them succeed and endure, like the Tournament Capital of Canada, Riverside Coliseum (now Sandman Centre), Riverside Park, Thompson Rivers University. Others come and go or wane over the years, like the KXA race track, the ginseng industry, Kami Overlanders Days and the giant KAMLOOPS sign on Mount Paul.

And others — like the performing arts centre or a downtown pedestrian mall — remain in the realm of the possible. Still others never pan out. Kamloops has had its share of the latter. Here’s 10 from over the years — some you might remember, others you might never have heard of — that never got further than musings, blueprints, studies or news releases.

1. MOVE THE AIRPORT: This was one of the grandest ideas of all and stuck around for several years. The thinking was that the location at Fulton Field isn’t big enough for expansion and is too awkward to get to via the Tranquille Road corridor. The vision was to move it up to Knutsford but the disruption and challenges of building an airport on prime agricultural lands were too daunting and, as the 1970s faded, so did the concept. Instead, the runway at the existing airport was extended and a new terminal built.

2. SEDRIC’S THEME PARK: With great fanfare, plans for a $250-million theme park including a water park, two hotels, convention centre, restaurants, retail space and an NHL-sized arena were announced at a glitzy media event in April 2009. Called Sedric’s Adventure Resort and Theme Park, it was to be built on 45 acres of TteS land beside Highway 5 across from Sun Rivers and would employ 1,500 and draw 8,000 visitors a day. A few months later it began falling apart over financing. It wasn’t the first theme park proposal hereabouts; a project called Frontier Town was going to collect heritage buildings onto one property in a Western theme. It, too, was short lived.

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3. BRIDGE PILLARS: What to do with the pillars? The steel and concrete Black Bridge was built to connect Kamloops and North Kamloops in 1925, replacing the wooden White Bridge condemned in 1923. It, in turn, was replaced by the Overlanders Bridge in 1961. Steel from the Black Bridge was removed and used in other bridges, leaving only the concrete pillars. An attempt to munch them down was abandoned in the 1970s. Ideas have included painting murals on them, erecting Kami the fish statues on top of them, and constructing a covered pedestrian bridge over them. Graffiti vandalism is the closest to any of those ideas to be accomplished.

4. DOWNTOWN TRAIN TRACKS: Removing the tracks from the downtown core has been a recurring theme over the years. Historically, tracks once ran down Victoria Street but every few years, somebody comes up with what they think is a brand-new idea to move the rail yard. Relocating it to the Pritchard area or to Mission Flats was long ago rejected due to shortage of space. Another idea was to build berms along the tracks to shield them from view and reduce noise. The best option: embrace the tracks as a vital and vibrant part of downtown. Many major cities do.

5. PADOVA CITY: In 1991, a developer named Giovanni Camporese, president of a cheese company called A&A Foods, bought the Tranquille School site west of Kamloops from the B.C.

government for $8 million. Tranquille had begun life as a tuberculosis sanitorium in 1907 and was re-purposed in 1959 to house mentally challenged patients. It closed for good in 1984 and the buildings and grounds deteriorated badly. Camporese, who renamed the site Padova City after his birth place in Italy, planned to turn it into a satellite residential community complete with a golf course, marina and commercial development. Padova City never got off the ground but the concept of an integrated farm community lives on. Tranquille Farm Fresh currently operates there and, in the long-term, there are still plans to develop it as Tranquille on the Lake if financing comes together.

6. DOWNTOWN CONVENTION CENTRE: Civic convention centres were once all the rage, bringing hundreds or even thousands of people into a city to spend money in the local economy during conferences. In the late 1990s, City council, with the support of local business groups, teamed up with a developer to build a taxpayer-subsidized hotel/convention centre where the Sandman Signature Hotel now stands on Lorne Street. Capital cost to the city would have been $2.5 million toward the building and $1.6 million toward a parkade. There were public concerns about it being a potential white elephant, and challenges with the private part of the financing, and the plan was eventually abandoned, leaving the convention business to hotels.

7. NEW CITY HALL: The need for a new City Hall has long been acknowledged but politically it’s a challenge due to costs. In 2004-2005 an ad hoc City Hall committee began looking into the possibility of obtaining land and then accumulating a reserve fund over several years to pay for the building or renos to an existing one. Sites including Stuart Wood School and existing downtown towers were among the possibilities investigated. One intriguing option involved closing off the intersection at First Avenue and Seymour Street, rerouting traffic and creating a civic campus that would include the Old Courthouse. Subsequent administrations allowed the initiative to die.

8. VALLEYVIEW BYPASS: This idea has been around at least since 1997. It would run from a point west of the Pine Ridge Golf Course, along the bluffs between Juniper Ridge and Valleyview, and connect with the existing bypass. It arose as part of a provincial plan to improve the Trans Canada between Cache Creek and the Alberta border. In the process, it would resolve serious safety concerns about the highway and frontage roads through Valleyview, such as the Vicars Road intersection. A costlier alternative would be to buy up a bunch of property along the current highway and construct overpasses. A combination of cost and strong resistance from the Juniper Ridge community have resulted in a lack of political will to pursue either.

9. SINGH STREET BRIDGE/ 6th AVENUE BRIDGE: Bridges keep popping up in plans for the future of the city. The Summit connector was built with a new Thompson River crossing at Singh Street in Brocklehurst in mind. When the city hits a population of 120,000, a new road would head down the hill from the hairpin turn on the connector and land at the new bridge, which would cross Rabbit Island and McArthur Island to Singh Street. Cost would be in the hundreds of millions. A new bridge was also long planned near the Red Bridge that would connect to a 6th Avenue extension. Both were dropped from the City’s transportation plan two years ago.

10. NORTH KAMLOOPS HOCKEY TEAM: Yep, this was a fleeting possibility some 15 years ago. The Williams Lake TimberWolves, a Junior A team playing in the B.C. Hockey League, were casting about for a new home. The McArthur Island Sports and Events Centre came up as a possibility, with the theory being that North Kamloops would embrace having its own team. With the Blazers on the South Shore and TimberWolves on the North, it would be Hockey

Heaven. But discussions never got to a firm proposal and the idea soon languished. The TimberWolves continued in Williams Lake, briefly considered a move to Wenatchee, changed owners and were suspended by the league.

And there’s your Top 10 unrequited big Kamloops ideas, proving that for every big idea that succeeds, there’s at least one or two that fail. As Winston Churchill said, “No idea is so outlandish that it should not be considered.”

Mel Rothenburger is a former mayor of Kamloops and a retired newspaper editor. He is a regular contributor to CFJC Today, publishes the ArmchairMayor.ca opinion website, and is a director on the Thompson-Nicola Regional District board. He can be reached at mrothenburger@armchairmayor.ca.

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Editor’s Note: This opinion piece reflects the views of its author, and does not necessarily represent the views of CFJC Today or the Jim Pattison Broadcast Group.