It felt like this last night as I sat through Rogers Brooks' presentation on branding with the new waterfront. It was reported on the Voices website that there was a strong feeling of "an Amway conference or some kind of cult event" taking place.
We never met Roger Brooks but an showman playing the role of Roger Brooks, a hippie who worked on the Bee Gees tour. He played the role of the anti-politican and anti-populist. It probably goes over well in the hinterland of the USA where he usually works. It felt like Roger was channeling the spirit of Stalin as he railed against public having a real say. I had the "monorail" song going through my head during the long bits. Maybe Roger has forgotten we have this little thing called elections in his long time in the United States. If the public doesn't like what is being done, they will toss out the Council and put people in place who will change the script that they're being told to clap for.
It seemed out of place as Roger spoke like there was a blank slate we would fill when we all know that staff has a plan almost done already. Darryl and others have already decided on the script, they just need us to clap without questioning anything.
But at the core of it is good as it leans heavily on whatever is proposed going through a rigorous feasibility study. The Council has already placed the new museum here, in a place where it will dominate the site and stated it will not be subsidized more than the current museum. So any businesses that can be convinced to locate here will have to provide a large input to the tax base that will cover the losses of the museum and what ever other money losing attractions Darryl has up his sleeve.
I bet that the old Site 8 and a 400 foot tower will raise back up at the end of this scheme with a lot of "amenity" money attached to at least move the Waterfront project forward. Millennium was forced to sell off their share of the land on Site 8 when their Olympic village scheme failed and they had to go out of business. The City of Vancouver picked up the property and sold it to the City of North Vancouver who is free to re-sell it to a developer. I bet factions of the De Coitiis family will rear it's greedy head to lead this project whether it is Onni, Pinnacle or Amacon.
Trouble follows this family who are locked in a Shakespearean tragedy of their own http://www2.canada.com/theprovince/news/story.html?id=fca1081a-8ba6-4568-a42c-e23962a6d3bc
The bottom line is that this must be a money producing enterprise for North Vancouver not just for developers as usual. Not counting any temporary revenue from future huge towers that the usual suspects will try to build while we're humming "monorail" or a new version "aquarium." Come on folks, sing it along with Darryl and Roger - aquarium ... AQUARIUM. Sounds better than Casino, doesn't it?
Roger gave a different website address for the survey but I think it's the same one. It does seem rather shorter and unsubstantial than what Roger talked about in his sales pitch but that's probably just the free Kool Aid wearing off.
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