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Letter: Unanswered questions require a pause on city’s large project plan

‘When you realize the road you’re on doesn’t reach the intended destination, do you continue on anyway or do you correct the direction you are travelling?’
301118_KED-artists-representation
(Supplied)

Since 2015, and still today, I have no vested interest in where or whether a second arena is built for the City of Greater Sudbury. I do have concerns that, from the start, council has not done the job they are paid for regarding the entire issue of the large projects. They are paid to be directors of the municipal corporation of Greater Sudbury — I feel they have failed miserably to fill their job performance requirements.

One of the more important issues involved is reflected in responses from many of those who support the Kingsway Entertainment District (KED) project. Almost without exception, the KED supporters claim the downtown is “dead”, walk away from it and build somewhere else. 

Where is the survey of councillors that answers the following?

What do they propose to do with the existing library, which would already be in the downtown if it was on the other side of MacKenzie Street?

What do they propose to do with the Bell Mansion art gallery, separated from the downtown only by railway tracks, and which belongs to a bankrupt Laurentian University?

What do they propose to do about the costs that haven’t, so far, been included?

What do they propose for drawing blood from the stone of aging demographics to pay for all of this? 

Their solution to the “dead” downtown? Build a new library on the downtown side of the street, and a new art gallery on the downtown side of the tracks. Really? Is that all there is to resurrecting the “dead” downtown that is being claimed by the KED supporters?

Both the KED and the Junction have seen no foresight applied beyond “just build it and they will come” without knowing who “they” are or where “they” will come from.

These questions are why a pause is needed, and some of the questions not answered by the PricewaterhouseCoopers updated report, which from my reading even PwC stated answered nothing. Good corporate directors should never have allowed the situation to get this far out of control, and even at the present stage should call a halt to all work on the large projects.

From a layman’s perspective, when you realize the road you’re on doesn’t reach the intended destination, do you continue on anyway or do you correct the direction you are travelling?

Thomas Price

Greater Sudbury