Creating a First-Class City
- Strategic Focus: A first-class downtown
- Taking Care of Business: A first-class city hall
- Fun for Everyone: A first-class lifestyle
Strategic Focus
Strategic focus is the discipline of paying attention to those things that are most important. Though the Official Community Plan provides excellent guiding principles, it doesn't provide a strategic focus or an action plan. City council must supply that, and must ensure the focus remains sharp.
The single most important initiative we must take is the re-invention of downtown. It must become a first-class, 24-hour destination; a place to live, work and play.
This single bold stoke significantly addresses four of the eight strategies outlined in the OCP: marketing the city, encouraging growth and development, growing civic pride, and rejuvenating the downtown. We built the university; now it's time to build the centre city. If not now, when?
We are not a first-class city until we have a first-class downtown.
Taking Care of Business
It's not enough to be "pro-business." We must take care of our own business by providing service and operational excellence at City Hall. This would benefit the entire city, from making it easier to do business to government and industry relations to overall lifestyle. We must also take care to ensure council directs administration, and not the other way around.
A first class city requires a first class City Hall.
Fun for Everyone
Prince George needs to become a participant's paradise, and a spectator's delight. Though we already have good community involvement and lifestyle opportunities, we can certainly improve. The two primary opportunities are civic facilities and civic promotion.
- Civic Facilities - beyond using what we have more efficiently, we need important new facilities. Specifically we need an indoor soccer and sports complex with a minimum of two fields immediately, and we need a multiple stage performing arts centre located downtown within the next three years.
- Civic Promotion - our facilities need more than simple
administration, they need promotion. We need an entrepreneurial-minded group
which will bring us the best in sports, entertainment and culture and actively
support the bidding and organization of tournaments, festivals, conventions,
trade shows, entertainment and cultural events.
A first-class city offers a first-class lifestyle.
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