Upper Fort Garry round-up

I thought it might be fun to do a little poll of the Winnipeg blog community to check out the opinions on the Upper Fort Garry issue. Most of the contributors on my usual circuit have been critical of the misinformation and game-playing from some of the Friends of Fort Garry supporters including The Rise and Sprawl, Policy Frog (incl. this & this), and Hacks Wonks. Waverly West hasn't commented much on the issue, but seemed to be somewhat in favour of the Friends' plan in a January post, and I'm not quite sure where R.U. Sirius stands.

But those are just some of the usual suspects. I decided to fire up Google Blog search to see what else was out there, and came across Kevin Hill with his BNA blog who had this to say:

When the dispute first came up I was somewhat for the Friends’ plan. It would link The Forks walkway to downtown and would be another touristy thing to do downtown. But, as with so many things in this city, the plan was ad hoc; on the fly; dependent on handouts and government funding ad infinitum. ‘Give us the money now we will work out all those pesky details later’ is a regular mantra in this city. Only when someone decides to do something do the usual suspects look up from their navels to complain about development. Apparently they were quite content to see the old gate just sit there for years with some crap painting on one side and a decrepit curling club on the other. ... Why do these people always come up with ideas when someone wants to actually do something downtown?

There is Jon Malek with his Site O Canada blog, which is purdy-near dedicated to Upper Fort Garry, and is firmly in support of the Friends. But then again, the guy is a 19 year-old D&D-playing student, so give him a few years as a tax-payer and he may have different views. Anyhoo, check him out.

But my favourite is Graham with his Progressive Winnipeg web site, and this post. Excerpt:

I'm fucking tired of this. I, a young person in Winnipeg, want nothing more than to see this city progress. Preventing the construction of something that would truly benefit Winnipeg is NOT progress! Sprawling the city out in suburb after suburb, is NOT progress. When will this city grow where it counts? Heaven forbid a developer wants to put an apartment on some parking lot downtown, which someone will no doubt find that it's history dates back to 1897 or something stupid like that, and that we can't bulldoze the parking lot, we need a plan, an interpretive centre on the rich history of the parking lot, a WORLD CLASS ATTRACTION!

I'm just fuckin tired of it.

Heh. I think I'll keep an eye on this kid. I'll update with more as I come across them.