SooToday received the following letter about the city's waterfront plan.
I just read this timely paragraph after reading the city waterfront plan. It came from a mystery paperback published in 2011.
“We entered the bank that stood between two shuttered shops. More failed businesses, she thought. Town high streets are dying and all because we’ve become lazy and prefer to do our shopping in one go at one of the big supermarkets on the outskirts. It is also the fault of various councils who had a penchant for turning high streets into pedestrian areas and then charging high fees for parking at the nearest available car park. No one wanted to walk anymore carrying heavy bags of groceries and moving from little shop to little shop. Maybe in the end, high streets would be turned into museums with people in 20th century dress parading up and down."
We have a white elephant in the Station Mall.
City has spent millions on a tiny downtown plaza of concrete. I’ve been once or twice to the market and the only downtown business I go to is the Scripture Gift and Book Shop, if I can negotiate the treacherous sidewalk.
The city is still blowing money by narrowing Queen Street further with large beds for trees and flowers, instead of fixing the roads. Hello? These sidewalks have to be plowed without damaging the equipment or injuring the worker. Now it is planning another doomed attempt to draw people downtown to a waterfront park of floating boardwalks, requiring more downtown streets converted into pedestrian areas.
These floating walks will need to be removed during winter. Such waterfront parks are suitable for southern climes. Instead of seeking public input and other ideas before the city rubber stamps these plans, they present us with a fait accompli and expect to use more taxpayer money.
Gene Monin
Sault Ste. Marie