Rothenburger — Casino rezoning issue has its foundation in City’s commitment to downtown core
COLUMN — You can bet there were more than a few surprised City councillors when they got wind of its staff’s opposition to Gateway Casinos and Entertainment Ltd.’s plan to move its Lake City Casino from the downtown core up to the old Rona building on Versatile Drive.
I’ll leave it to others to debate where casinos should be built. The bigger issue is the prominence of the downtown core in City planning.
The community plan emphasizes the importance of keeping the downtown strong. As Coun. Tina Lange told me two weeks ago, the downtown core looks healthy on the outside but it’s deceptive. It always seems just a few empty stores away from a slippery slope.
For the past 20 years, the City has invested millions in rehabbing the downtown, focusing on turning Victoria Street into an inviting shopping and business area. The broad sidewalks, curb cuts, lighting, hanging baskets and restaurant patios of today are a thankful cry from the dowdy storefronts and cold concrete that once characterized the street.
A vibrant downtown needs a combination of robust businesses, 24-hour residents and public amenities. Anyone who visits Victoria Street after about 7 p.m. knows there are still two distinct populations downtown — daytime and nighttime.
It hasn’t yet achieved an after-dark lived-in look, one reason being that residences aren’t the most lucrative use of prime downtown real estate. The alternative is to locate facilities there that attract people back from the suburbs after dinner, or for dinner.
It’s been a big driver in City Hall’s focus on the downtown area as the location for a new performing arts centre, and why TRU’s courtship on that file hasn’t been met with enthusiasm.
The prospect of losing the casino — a people draw — to another part of town was assuaged by the prospect of the new performing arts theatre either replacing it at the Hotel 540 or being built on the Kamloops Daily News property. It seemed like a fairly even swap.
(As an aside, removing Hotel 540 from the equation would reduce the options for a performing arts centre location by one, and if the City sticks to its commitment to build it downtown, it leaves a single available address — 393 Seymour Street, the KDN property.)
But the report from City staff is based on the community plan’s loyalty to the downtown and the principle of concentrating amenities there. The 10-page report, written by planner Linda Piroddi and signed off by development and engineering services director Marvin Kwiatkowski, is one of the longer such reports put together for council on a rezoning application. While staff isn’t averse to taking a stand, it also always has the option of simply pointing out alternatives and outlining the pros and cons of each, leaving council to decide.
Council will still decide, but the report puts it in a bit of a corner. The rationale behind the report is hard to argue with — the voluntary loss of a facility that draws people downtown isn’t supported by the community plan.
The report is detailed and worth reading, but the bottom line is its conclusion on page 10:
“KamPlan and the City Centre Plan encourage a variety of tourist, restaurant, and entertainment uses to develop and strengthen the downtown area as the primary cultural and entertainment district of Kamloops. Relocating the casino out of the City Centre is not supported by KamPlan nor City Centre Plan policy, nor is it supported by planning philosophy…”
So the conundrum is this: the City is determined to strengthen the downtown by putting one particular facility there. How can it then rationalize facilitating the moving out of another? As Coun. Lange sometimes likes to say, “Be careful what you wish for.”
Not that such contradictions are unheard of — witness council’s very recent avoidance of involvement in the Stuart Wood elementary school issue. It’s reasoning on that one was that it must allow the chips to fall where they may because it wasn’t their business, even though the City owns the building and one of the strongest arguments for keeping Stuart Wood as a school is that it strengthens the downtown community.
The report does acknowledge that council might send the casino rezoning to a public hearing despite staff’s recommendation, and that, too, is a pretty safe bet. At that hearing, all the usual issues surrounding any rezoning application are open to discussion, including such things as traffic, possible noise, parking and so on. And the impact on the community plan.
And the elephant in the room will be the performing arts centre.
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This is another chance for me to say that downtown would benefit tremendously by closing Victoria Street to traffic. As it stands, I avoid the downtown because the noise and pollution associated with vehicular traffic are extremely annoying and unhealthy.
But back to the topic on hand, I have a tough time thinking that city staff knows best.
As pointed out in the article, the closure of Stuart Wood Elementary and the lack of input from said staff (and council I will add) has given me even more reasons to doubt and challenge anything recommended (or not) by them all.
I personally see the casino as a blight on a community and I would encourage anyone running a casino to move to the “fringes”. There is nothing “cultural” nor “communal” about a casino which promotes a host of social ills with profound and extremely unhealthy ramification to the community at large.
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Well written blog. If the city wishes to continue with the Kamplan, then put the performing arts centre downtown, along with a convention centre. Now we are still stuck with a lack of parking. The old Rona site would good for parking, has space to expand and would capture the off highway traffic. Problem might be the flow of traffic along Hugh Allan Drive. Except the city contrary to the Kamplan gave the go-ahead for the construction of the Marriott Hotel at the corner of Hugh Allan and Pacific Way, the only saving grace there is that there will be no traffic flow unto Pacific Way in the winter. A road that can be extremely slippery during the winter months. Is there a possibility that the city fathers/BB B see the passengers coming off the Rocky Mountaineer as a cash cow during the summer and don ‘t want to lose the business to any area outside of the downtown. I would be interested in knowing where do casinos in BC usually put their facilities. In the downtown core and outside of the downtown.
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