The “It’s Your Downtown” Ads Never Mentioned This….

After a nice meal at a Main Street restaurant yesterday night, our group left the establishment and proceeded to discuss that evening’s movie options outside. Some drunken idiot walks out of the Winnipeg Hotel, stands right at the edge of the curb and proceeds to URINATE onto Main Street in front of all of us. We all proceeded to joke how this fellow must have mistaken “It’s Your Downtown” with “Urine Downtown.”

The Downtown Biz Website (http://www.downtownwinnipegbiz.com/index/its_your_downtown) emphatically states:

“Winnipeggers need to come to the point where it’s okay to love downtown again!” If something is done about people urinating in the streets, vandalizing our cars or aggressively panhandling we will.

Other nuggets from the Downtown Biz website include:

“If you don’t like downtown, you have the power to change it. Quit complaining, get off your butt and do something about it.
When we all pitch in and get behind downtown, it can only get better.
It’s our downtown for better or for worse. When we realize it’s OUR downtown to use or abuse, we have the power to change it.”

Their site has to be seen to believed - especially the Top 10 Reasons It’s Your Downtown section. Apparently the problem is not WITH downtown, but with the PEOPLE who are too scared to frequent downtown. According to the list, we are duty bound to suck it up and head for Portage and Main, our safety be damned. In what parallel universe does browbeating your target market make sense?

I keep trying to “do something about it” by spending my hard earned money in the vicinity of the windy intersection. My reward is either a golden shower show, a smashed window or a broken lock on my vehicle. If this is the best campaign the Downtown Biz can muster, all public money funding them should be rescinded and applied to law enforcement. Mindless platitudes and browbeatings won’t bring us downtown – making us feel safe will. I for one love going downtown – I just don’t like the surprises that inevitably follow…

The Waverley West "Deal"

I have been meaning to start this blog for quite some time now. There was the small matter of finding a subject to kickstart my inaugural post. That all ended Thursday July 27, 2006 when a “deal” for Waverley West was finally hammered out.

This suburban development was supposed to be a revolutionary overhaul of suburbia as we know it. Unfortunately, we have an inverted pyramid where City planners have more strategic vision that the pointy heads at the decision making level. I guess Spirited Energy is NDPspeak for diminished expectations and the steadfast vigour with which some pursue mediocrity.

To quote Bartley Kives’ article in the Winnipeg Free Press:

“NDP troubleshooter Eugene Kostyra agreed to a deal that will see the province provide $21 million toward a stripped down $38-million Kenaston Boulevard that will not include any flyovers, which cost $13 million apiece.”

Translation: get ready for idling at more red lights folks.

Let me preface what follows with the caveat that I am not one of those extreme leftists that feels we should all be living in 10 foot by 10 foot rabbit hutches downtown. I believe consumers should be given the choice to live where they want to. Downtown living suits some and suburbia suits others.

My support for a market driven economy includes the fundamental premise that consumers who CAUSE the need for infrastructure improvements should be the ones to PAY for said improvements. Therefore I am perplexed at why this “deal” is solely predicated on governments picking up the tab.

In isolation, $26 million seems like a big chunk of change for any government to digest. Waverley West is projected to house some 60,000 residents over the course of the next few decades. If one is to assume a 4 person household, this translates into 15,000 housing units, which subsequently translates into $1,733.33 per house. On a $180,000.00 house, this represents LESS THAN ONE PERCENT of the total purchase price.

My solution? A $2,000.00 per lot levy on each home sold in Waverley West to cover the extra infrastructure improvements necessitated by the exodus to the suburbs. The remaining $266.67 would go to fund interest payments on a bond issue used to finance the flyovers. Surely future Waverley West residents could forego 2-3 months worth of new minivan or SUV payments to fund a problem they were directly responsible for creating…