WORKING ON DOWNTOWN

Our City Center is important, but great looking roads don’t build prosperity. We need to be focused on getting people living, working, and playing downtown.

 
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If re-elected, I intend to advocate for:

  • A long pause on the Downtown Rehabilitation project. The pipes that needed urgent replacing are already replaced. For now, investment is better spent elsewhere.

  • Exploring the development of seniors housing on the Montrose Cultural Centre site (south of the library). Partnerships with Grande Spirit Foundation and private industry may provide opportunity to build a tower that has a mix of affordable housing for seniors and market housing for anyone. This would fill an important need in our community (housing seniors) while also creating economic activity in the City Centre. Within this development, the creation of an indoor park or garden should also be explored.

  • Building a playground on the Montrose Cultural Centre site (south of the library). This would make it much more appealing for families to live and play in the City Centre.

  • Implementing light pole wraps, street sign toppers, and other low cost options to brand the “City Centre.”

  • Creation of a “micro-festival” program. Groups that want to put on an event downtown would be given $1000, 4 hours of professional graphic design time to create promotional material, marketing via City social media, and permission to close a side street for a morning or afternoon. These would provide immediate draw to the City Centre, and successful micro-events may lead to the creation of future larger scale events.

  • Exploring City partnership in creating daycare spaces downtown. This would fulfill a childcare need in our community and make it more practical for parents of young children to live or work in the City Centre.

  • Where practical, moving City and Aquatera office jobs downtown. More professionals working downtown is a sure way to increase economic activity.

  • Continued support of the Mobile Outreach Program and other initiatives to decrease social disorder, respond to complaints, and get vulnerable residents help they need.

 

During my time on Council, I undertook the following work to encourage activity in our downtown:

  • Brought forward this successful motion, which led to the formation of the Mobile Outreach Program. Downtown residents and businesses have reported that Mobile Outreach has been very successful in getting them a rapid response to complaints of nuisance behaviour. It has also gotten many vulnerable people connected with resources they need for health and safety.

  • Supported Art in the Alley, marketing grants to the Downtown Business Association, the downtown skating oval, and other efforts to provide reasons for people to visit the City Centre to shop and play.

  • Supported Phase 3 of Downtown Rehabilitation (100 Ave east of CIBC, completed in 2018). This was needed to replace underground pipes. Some were very close to failure, and increased capacity was needed to support the demolition and re-development of the Park Hotel site.

  • Voted against Phase 4 of Downtown Rehabilitation. Engineering reports showed that the pipes did not require a full replacement, and increased capacity is not needed at this time. Projects this expensive and this disruptive should only be undertaken to do necessary infrastructure replacement.

Do you have questions, ideas, or feedback? I’d love to hear from you! Find me on social media (@DylanBresseyGP) or click here to contact me.