I attended the City of Nelson’s meeting on the draft Sustainable Waterfront and Downtown Master Plan last week at the Hume Hotel where all of about a dozen people, including city staff, gathered for the purpose of giving feedback. My first impression was that it appeared like a 1950s vision of what the future should hold for Nelson’s waterfront and downtown.
My key reason for saying so is that it does not seem to reflect, with one exception, progressive ideas about architecture and town planning that demand that building designs meld into the environment, and that each new building match the design of those around it. True, an example was given of how a new building among heritage buildings would assume the shape and feeling of those around it, but this idea of architecture of the 21st century did not seem to be an over-arching theme for the rest of downtown and waterfront development.
To give an example of what I’m talking about, the proposed housing developments now awaiting approval for the waterfront have the uniform, repetitive urban look and feel of a Calgary suburb.
This is what’s going to sit on our waterfront, if approved. In my view, this would be an aberration in the same sense that the monster home on the North Shore feels completely out of place in a natural environment as ours.
The other concern is that inviting development to the waterfront will up taxes, not reduce them. One of the goals, I believe, of the exercise is to ease the burden on taxpayers by introducing new sources of taxation. No assurances were given that this would be so.
At a time when food prices are rising, do we really want to saddle ourselves with projects that will up taxes rather than keep them in line?
Phil Mader, Nelson