Prince George City Council voted to move ahead with research on vacant properties in the downtown area, and how to fill them.
This was a continuation of a discussion held on the topic during Council’s last meeting.
The original notice of motion, put forward by Councillor Trudy Klassen, would have staff report on a pilot program allowing vacant ground-floor spaces to be temporarily used for food, community services, creative manufacturing, among others.
At last night’s (Wednesday) meeting, Klassen withdrew the original motion, and put forward a revised version.
The new motion would direct administration to contract UNBC’s planning department to work with them on researching why there are vacancies downtown, and provide options for interventions and strategies.
“If there are things that we can do in terms of regulatory mechanisms and funding opportunities, then that’s what I’d like that report to come back as,” Klassen said.
Klassen’s motion also included a budget of up to an amount of $10,000. Director of Finance and IT Services Kris Dalio said that could come from the Council Contingency Fund.
“One of our first observations of this new motion is that the reference to the downtown strategy has been removed from this motion,” said City Manager Walter Babicz.
“The Downtown Strategy was approved by Council back in 2024 and it provides a framework and the principles to help move the Downtown towards the vision of being a destination, gathering place, business and culture.”
Babicz noted the Downtown Strategy already includes recommendations related to reducing retail vacancy, supported by research and engagement done in the development of the strategy.
“Administration feels that those recommendations should be part of the report back to Council on this initiative as well for Council’s consideration,” he explained.
“With a Downtown Strategy already in place and being implemented, slowly but surely because we don’t have a big team of people working on it, I don’t want to lose the traction that team might be having with the Downtown Strategy, but also be able to report back to Council what that strategy has for recommendations specifically related to vacancy in the downtown core, because there is specifics in that document,” added Director of Planning and Development Deanna Wasnik.
Klassen said she doesn’t want this to be a duplication, but she wants it to be hand-in-hand.
Wasnik also noted she would be returning to Council with a report on this fall on downtown nightlife, and could have a conversation with UNBC and discuss a path forward at that time.
Manager of Legislative services Ethan Anderson said a motion to refer to staff could work.
“The intent would be for us to report back on the Downtown Strategy and the recommendations that are already within it that address specifically the issue of vacancy store fronts or vacancy retail space in the downtown, because there are at least a handful in that strategy that address that specifically, but they would require extra resources in the form of people and money,” Wasnik added.
Councillor Kyle Sampson said he couldn’t support the motion for a couple of reasons.
“It’s not that I don’t support that we’re looking into vacancies and potential uses, my concern is I feel like this may have already been done. Before I make the decision on something like this, I want to see what the report and the work that’s already been done has to say,” he said.
“The second piece is, I guess I do have concern where we’d be specifying in this, we’re saying ‘hey, let’s give $10,000 to UNBC,’ before I even have monetary values out there in any sort of approved, even indication of approval from Council, my preference would be that we actually, first, look at what’s already been done, and then second, we would maybe have a conversation with staff to look at what the scope of something like this might be and what that should cost before we even put a price out there.”
Mayor Simon Yu said this could be a good opportunity to get fresh eyes on the downtown.
Council voted down the referral motion with a 4-4 motion with Councillors Bennett, Polillo, Ramsay, and Sampson opposed. Councillor Garth Frizzell was absent from the meeting.
This put the original motion back on the floor, which Council amended by removing the dollar value and changing contacting UNBC’s planning department to just contacting UNBC, allowing them to decide which departments could help with the project.
This was passed, as well as a motion to refer to staff.
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