The street between that parking lot across from the old Shelter House and the old Odeon is Viscount Street. A bus terminal area there might fit, but it's too far for route 2/12 to access without changing timing points. It wouldn't be able to get to the terminal very easily. Almost every route would have to be changed quite significantly to access that area and it would shift several routes out of downtown completely, requiring either a transfer to another route that does go downtown or a downtown shuttle. The parking lot on North Street would also require every single route to be changed slightly and every bus would have to make multiple turns to get to that site. Using Brodie Terminal is already bad enough with all the turns. The southwest part of such a terminal design would be very difficult to get a bus to, considering how sharp the turn it. It also removes a lot of frequently used parking spaces.
The vacant lots along May Street have a similar problem. Unless buses are all re-routed to residential side street in McKellar Park and access it from behind, there are going to be major problems when it comes to turning into that area. May Street at that location might have to be five-laned or traffic lights may have to be set up.
Two places I came up with are the parking lot across from Skaf's, between Petrie's Cycle and the buildings on Victoria (which might no be long enough for the bus bays they want, a terminal where buses are all parked on an angle parallel to each other might work) and the parking lots on south Brodie Street, directly across from the library. The main problem with both would be that each site is part of several private lots, so the city would have a bit of trouble putting together the land for a terminal.
Syndicate Avenue is being closed off. The city might open a street along the north side of Victoriaville, it's currently a single one-way eastbound lane. There will probably be some sort of green space or plaza type link between the north entrance and the court house. This site could also be used as a transit street with minimal route changes, if transit is ok with a transit street format but the drivers prefer bus bays like Water Street as it is much easier to manoeuvre around that kind of platform.
Even if Victoriaville was demolished, for Syndicate to go through that area the Parkade would have to be demolished, or Syndicate will be reduced to split one lane in each direction for one block. It isn't a very major street for through traffic anymore anyway. Demolishing Victoriaville probably won't have the desired effect anyway, as the death of downtown cores is a sociological problem, not a logistical one. Tearing down Intercity, Thunder Centre and RioCann Centre would have a better result.
Aside from that, we have to accept that downtown Fort William is not downtown Thunder Bay. It's not the centre of a city of 110,000. It is the centre of a city of 50,000. Downtown Port Arthur is the same. People don't shop at the downtown cores because Intercity is more accessible to more people, has more parking, more stores and more space.
John Howard Society might be moving to 315 South Syndicate. People oppose it because it is a "quiet neighbourhood on a low traffic street", completely oblivious to the fact that they live downtown on a collector road.
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