Raise the Hammer

The incidents I've mentioned have been reported to the police, as well as the spectator and a certain city councilor. Whether we'll ever hear what really happened is another question. But there are pictures, and a license plate number.

And for the record, though I am far from privileged enough to own a building downtown, I know many who are, and who do. These individuals, who lack the massive financial resources and vast labour pool available to LIUNA have been busy for years upgrading their buildings, one step at a time, into green buildings, living spaces, cafes and art galleries. Don't tell me LIUNA (or Darko Vranich, or Harry Stinson, or whomever) do not have the resources.

The current state of downtown is a direct result of the conversion of tons of small streets full of heritage buildings, with street-fronting shops and floors of store-top apartments, offering people without massive bank accounts and lines of credit the option to live or open businesses downtown. Now we have underused office buildings, more mall-type resource space than we can find occupants for, (even though we've moved city hall into it), more surface parking lots than we can count and a host of the last wave of "urban renewal" architecture proving inadequate and poorly built (thank you to the last generation's crop of sketchy construction groups, like Pigot), and in need of rebuilding only a few decades later.

Everywhere around town one can witness pictures of downtown in its former glory, with turn-of-the century architecture, an open air farmer's market, a beautiful old-style city hall and, most importantly, massive crowds. Yet, when faced with the same questions that resulted in boondoggles like the City Centre, we just keep making the same leaps, over and over again, assuming that if we build them, they will come.