Mig’s thread elsewhere, about cel phone and text service in town and the fact that Rogers seems to be a tad behind schedule with their plans, got me to thinking about other should, coulda, wouldas.
So put on your thinking caps and think back a bit.
Add to the list those projects that were supposed to come to town, but somehow never seemed to make it past the floating balloon stage.
We’ll put aside the obvious one of the Pulp Mill…
And judging by the pace of development of that shopping village we’ll put it on the watch list.
But I seem to remember some other grand plans that haven’t quite made it from dream stage to cold hard steel in the ground.
I remember that at one time Canadian Tire was going to buy the bowling alley and put up a shopping mecca (no doubt changing their minds when the Shopping village idea came along, but now still leaving us without the icon of Canadian shopping)
I remember that they planned on a Steel Mill at one time out a Ridley Island…
I remember that there was talk of an LNG plant for the city (that one came around twice)
Some of you long timers can probably share even further so add away…
Be interesting to see how many of these things there were out there and just how large the place might have been if they all had come together…
Lets start at the beginning, how about the giant hotel to be built by the infamous Charles Hays down by the waterfront. there were bluprints and was to be built along the lines of the Empress Hotel in Victoria.
there was truth to the steel mill at ridley, they actually started construction. can you remember all those metal frames that were welded together right off the side of that highway in front of the coal piles? they had some piping run too but then the outfit went bankrupt and it was never picked up by anyone else. i havnt been out there for a long time so i dont know if its still sitting there or if they finally tore it back down.
The pipe racks, tanks and rail infrastructure built in front of the Coal piles was part of the Sulfur Corp of Canada project that went bankrupt. Are you sure that’s not what you are talking about?
To the best of my knowledge plans for the Steel Mill on Ridley never got past the planning stage, although there was plenty of work that went into it.
Canadian Tire was going to buy the land from the Bowling Alley, the old Rainbow Chrysler, the vet, that lot that has the boats and trucks on it, and all the way over GM… but that deal fell through because someone didn’t want to sell (I think)
How about that book boat? Was that idea actually going to float or was it just one of Alan’s dreams?
To digress a little, I have a large 400:1 scale map from the Grand Trunk-Pacific Town and Development Company LTD. from March of 1909 hanging on the wall here and it shows a few things that were planned out, like a huge dry dock encompassing the entire Hays Creek basin (this was red pencilled in btw) and such things as Park Avenue curving back to the east instead of down to the harbour, McBride street ending at 9th , Moresby connecting to Graham avenue and the start of a road called “Circuit” coming off of Omineca and heading south that might have been an attempt to go around the south end of the island?? Aside from a few extra streets scattered here and there (“Canada”,“Justin” and “Lambert” near Seal Cove,“Tate” in the West End, etc) it’s pretty easy to see how things were well planned out even back then…since it shows the individual lots I can easily pick out the lot where the house I used to own there was built. Looks like they had some major plans for development even back then that took a lot longer to complete than they’d envisioned but still, it’s pretty close to the reality.
We were supposed to get a “Fixed Link” to the airport. There were plans for a bridge to help boost the usage of the airport and would also connect the communities of Laxkwalaams and Metlakatla to Prince Rupert.
(I think)
