Kelowna.com - Kelowna. Right Now!

Fly on the Web

By Marshall Jones

Hello and welcome to CD21Zone.com. CD-21 Zone. Right Now!

We’ve had about a dozen stories on the subject in the last week from news to opinion to news opinion (whatever that is). It looks like the streak will continue today and Monday, too, as we all try to make some sense of this thing and what it means to our fair city.

Given the amount of discussion it’s generated, it’s clear that after a year of virtual news blackout on the subject, there’s plenty of confusion out there.

Until councillors voted last week to start all over, they were legally required to not discuss the ambitious redevelopment of Lawrence and Leon avenues. Now the floodgates have opened again.

The issue has not only monopolized our headlines, it’s monopolized discussion in the newsroom. We argue over the history and future of the city. We discuss the risks and rewards for developers and risks and rewards for taxpayers.

We really only agree that as a discussion item, we hate having to keep calling it CD-21 Zone. Terrible words like that keep voter turnout low. The vast majority of average citizens (those who don’t vote in local elections) can’t get excited about a Zone. I know that doesn’t speak well of Average Citizen but I didn’t create human nature, I just try to write headlines for it.

How’s this for an attention getter: City council rescinds second and third reading on CD-21 Zone. Even an exclamation point couldn’t sex that up. How about: “Kelowna still cool on Wall of Shadows” or “Downtown Skyline 2030 project needs tinkering” or “New City Hall dance craze: three steps forward, two steps back.”

Get their attention—and then clarify things, bring in new opinions. Not that clarity is needed to form an opinion. Seems everyone already has a stand. Like Tiger Woods and marijuana, people either love it or hate it.

I’ll tell you what I think, since you asked. I think a decision is a decision, even when it’s no decision at all. Our single greatest attraction and first point of entry by anyone arriving from the west—City Park and downtown—is across the street from the ugliest place in the whole city (with apologies to Hein Road).

I have great respect for the difficulties we all face with an inevitable homeless population, but by encouraging it to linger and loiter with the Gospel Mission, Ki-Low-Na Friendship Centre and Drop-In Centre and most nightclubs jammed into a tourist’s first impressions of our city, we are impeding progress for all of us. And forget outside developers and rich tourists: I want to take my kids to City park and not be worried about needle sticks. Or have to walk around Leon Avenue to get to a parkade.

Inaction is an action. Left to its own devices, the city’s plan to buy land as it becomes available so it could redevelop would have taken 20 years all its own. Make it a 50-year-plan. And it would have to include private developers anyway.

Be very clear—this isn’t a developer’s plan; it’s the city’s plan.

And it’s a Twenty. Year. Plan. If there aren’t high rises (only Kelowna would call them that) in 20 years, then we are negligent wardens of this beautiful valley because we can’t keep going out.

But that’s just my opinion. I have one because I love this place. And I respect that those who disagree do so passionately because they love this place as well. Let’s remember that and not make this personal. The Wise and Knowing Lady Gaga was right when she said “baby when it’s love if it ain’t rough, it isn’t fun.”

But let’s keep it reasonable.

marshall@kelowna.com