Tuesday, January 20, 2009

A good planner is hard to find

I wonder why. Would you bother sticking around?
"City staff are calling the Ikea project a "smart development," in that the road, water and sewer upgrades required to build the new retail mecca are "also beneficial to the surrounding area" and will be built ahead of schedule by the developer. "This is something we're looking at doing for the first time," city economic development manager Barry Thorgrimson said Monday."

"We're certainly encouraging this type of development in the future."


As opposed to what is being encouraged now, or at any time in the past 37 years.

Corner of Waverley and Bishop Grandin Blvd., 2005. Unfortunately there were no lights at the City bright enough to spin this as "smart development" then, so it was given the (rather passé) term 'suburban sprawl'.

7 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Bring on the jobs. Forget about everything else.

In reality, this isn't a bad way to go. Have developers foot the bill upfront. I guess the only question is the City's "repayment plan to them.

That would be nice to see on paper lest it ends up costing us millions more.

4:13 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Ikea downtown sounds a lot better now eh?

Whatever happened to the city not footing the bill and passing it on to the developer?

5:36 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I don't buy your first sentence Mr.N but agree with the last one. What are the capital costs, the maintenance costs, cost to expand transit to the area, etc.. and what is the annual tax revenue?

This debate seems to happen in a bubble without specific details.

As if Ikea wouldn't have been a great fit for the canada post building though...

10:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

ANON 10...just being a little sarcastic, but in the end, yes, at least there is some work and investment created. Is there a better place for it, i can't say. IKEA knows what their planning is , they present it , if all above board, they proceed. A a future corporate citizen, I can't expect more from them.

I can't expect IKEA to "fix" my City. I'm sure you don't either.

Safe to say, we all know there is no plan . Since we are so focused on the university and growing that suburb ( over 600 Million of paper allocated to it so far ), building 500 Condo's at the Ikea site isn't such a bad thing. Also, that area is fairly central and I wouldn't consider it sprawl.

After all, if we wanted those residences and more in the Core, perhaps the logical thing would be to move the university to the Core.

But yes, accountability is top of the list. Something I don't expect from the brain trust at City hall.

10:44 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

what would happen if IKEA was told no, not there. Closer to the Inner city. would they have left?

I don't think so.

Winnipeg leaders are a bunch of whimps.

3:06 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

River heights isn't that far from the "inner city is it. and as the South end is growing, that area dwarfs all others as far as potential.

But for arguments sake, where would you drop the store. there isn't any lot that big that is vacant.

3:41 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Orwellian.

6:50 PM  

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