[nickinacan]

Just to continue, I want to talk about some of the ideas that were shared during the presentation.

The most affirmative ideas were brought up with discussion with Councillor Barinder Rasode. The City of Surrey is committed to building one of the most sustainable city centres in North America. In addition, the plans are to develop cultural draws such as a new central library, recreation centre, parkland and events in the city centre to draw people in. The city's vision is to be able to have people locate in the city centre, and never have to leave. Everything will be located in one central area, and in walking or biking distance.

One gentleman in the crowd mentioned that he was an avid sports fan and wondered if they would ever develop a stadium. Oddly enough, Councillor Rasode mentioned that this was being discussed and is in the planning stages. I would assume that this would be the fabled 10,000 to 15,000 seat mixed use stadium that the Lower Mainland desperately needs. There was no mention of location.

As for City Hall, they are 100% in to moving City Hall to the City Centre.

I had the chance to talk to the representative from Bing Thom Architects regarding the designs. One thing that he mentioned is that city council has already approved these designs. As for the new building, it will eventually come in time, but he mentioned that market studies are currently being completed. He mentioned that the whole development of the City Centre could take up to 30 years. Councillor Rasode has mentioned that City Council's goal is to make Surrey City Centre "better than" Downtown Vancouver in 10 years. That is a very ambitious goal.

This presentation was much more informative than the previous open house. It didn't get down to the intricacies and details, but that is something that is currently being studied, but the ideas that were presented were all excellent.

One nice surprise was Former Vancouver Councillor Gordon Price was in attendance and shared some of his some advice/opinions/rants. he was impressed with the overall plan, but mentioned that to make it successful, the major focus needs to be on encouraging people to move around without using cars. In essence, he suggested multiple modes from Skytrain, LRT, but and even more bicycle right of ways. In addition, he mentioned that the main competition for the City Centre will be Guildford as a result of the Gateway program.

SFU apparently has an overwhelming demand to get into the Surrey Campus and will be investing in developing more space to accommodate the demand. One idea that was tossed around was even moving the focus off of Burnaby Mountain and and putting it on Surrey. There was even talk of possibly moving their sports teams to Surrey. These are only ideas.