Well, it’s good to see city council decide to tackle the 3.5 acre site it (we) owns on the city’s waterfront beside the Discovery Harbour Mall.
Council has struck a task force to look into what to do with the property. This land has been on the books for far too long now. It was acquired as a condition of creating the Discovery Harbour Mall which was built by the Campbell River Indian Band who have made good use of their portion. The city initially had a time frame within which it had to build something but that got extended. It was first proposed to be used for a community centre back in the early 1990’s and then there was the suggestion of a casino. Everybody’s had an opinion on what should go there but the controversy surrounding the use of the land has made previous councils too timid to make a decision about it.
And so, it has sat for over 20 years like a “sand pit,” as Mirror City Hall reporter Kristen Douglas says on Page 14 of this issue. There hasn’t even been the impetus to hydro-seed the property and grow grass on the site just to make it look less ghastly. Plant a tree for goodness sake. A park bench! Could we not have had a simple park bench or two from where we could watch our beautiful Discovery Passage? How much would that have cost?
But no, it’s been decades of wrangling and dithering. Let’s hope this new task force can finally get this property dealt with once and for all.