What I Learned At Moncton's Future Vision Quest

Downtown Moncton Inc and the City of Moncton collaborated with a brace of urban planners who provided the facilitation leadership over three days ending last night with a recap of the process.

You may have seen the small gaggle of keeners taking sight lines and holding up their collective fingers to the winds of change in Canada's downtown core as they took a keep-it-in-perspective look at Moncton and how it should be grooming itself for success in the future.

There will be much written about the details in the next few days and how the idea capture is going to be crunched through professional eye glasses to make a Moncton Plan Document that the Greater Moncton Planning Commission and City Council can try to follow in guiding the growth and expansion of this rather remarkable city.

Remarkable city came out in the synopsis of a few of the consultants who probably had not been in Moncton before, and like many before them, were, and are impressed with the sense of momentum and optimism that permeates community life in Moncton.

Moncton in 2006 is vibrant and it is determined to succeed.

On the eve of the Planning and Vision Conference, the redoubtable John Thompson of Enterprise Greater Moncton, who resembles the poster child for man in charge and on a mission of destiny with success, showed Moncton's business community leadership a video promo for Moncton that spoke eloquently in three languages; the advanced and perceived benefits of Moncton as a success location, or location for success.

Three languages, English, fluent French and in a jarring bit, in equally fluent Mandarin Chinese spoke well of Moncton’s mission to be their next business location.

Metro Moncton, recognizing that there is an 800 lb gorilla in economic market development in the World, is inviting China to take a look at investing in North America through an inland port called Moncton.( Alphabetically PC-Dieppe-Moncton-Riverview ). Call me crazy, but selling in Chinese just might have merit.

Eastern Asian cultures will make an economic decision based on how well mannered and respectful of appropriate etiquette is displayed by the candidate seeking to do business with them, and Moncton earns credit for being culturally, if not economically ambitious.

Moncton has always attempted to punch outside its weight class and this community sense of can do attitude caught the attention of the planners who were on day parole from living in Toronto, and came to Moncton to help guide a process that at its heart is meant to produce a plan for greatness.

Think of Moncton as a Great City. Don’t laugh, if it can be visualized, it can be built and Moncton has a history of dreaming a series of little dreams and building big.

Now this could be mocked, but should not be.

Moncton is at a point that I call a position of start. We have a collective opportunity to build out a great City in Atlantic Canada and possibly one of Canada's cultural jewels here. It is more than multi-lingual and multi-culturalism for the sake of political correctness. It is about creating a community where people love to live and live to love their community lives.

Love happens to community when the community is respected because it respects itself.

That is the real goal.

Saturday night, the recapping of the three days of deliberations brought out a deep seated affection for bringing more green space into the City and in particular treescapes along our major streets and converting these streetscapes into people friendly boulevards reminiscent of any great street in Europe. This is Euro city design, where the cars and side streets are narrow and feed out onto these giant promenades and wide terraced sidewalks in front of multi-use and multi-tenancy level occupants.

Broad seating areas where at every time of the day, people come to congregate and congratulate themselves on their wisdom in living in such a fine place. It is called Civic branding. It is to be cherished.

Boiled down, the planners are seeing a Cityscape for principals streets in Moncton that resemble the best of major and great cities in the World where the populace come together to celebrate their daily life among friendly and supportive street level service businesses that create and cater to a sense of community and continuity.

Think Joe Mocca's Coffee Café corner on steroids and that of the wonderful cafe society that is emerging on and along Moncton’s Main Street in front of the National Bank building, nestled among the tree shades and colorful patio umbrellas that are trying to sprout along Moncton's present Main Street brick sidewalk and granite icon curbing that now defines the re-invented Moncton of 2000 era.

Think trees are not important. Forget my mocking in yesterday’s previous post about trees as economic planning, and go sit in the dining area of the Hudson Bay’s restaurant at the window booth and look east towards Main Street. You can easily see that wonderful and stubborn line of tree foliage sprouting up along that one streetscape of Main Street. Then visualize it without them. Bring on the trees.

Case closed. Bring on the 5000 planted tree plantation that someone proposed in a moment of shared lunacy at the Planning Session. Trees, there is something community and nurturing about them.

Ever notice how violent a denuded forest is after clear cutting. It is not only Bambi who weeps.

As I listed to the enthusiasm and the creativity that came out of the process, I was struck about how much of what is being proposed is building on what has been done and built before and how it oddly makes new sense to take Moncton to the next level.

That next level is to build a great City with a simple attention to detail that brings a harmony in design and contractor execution that will define a community streetscape that encourages artistry, artists, residency and new business development.

What I recalled, and I am sure that the other veteran of every visioning process in Moncton since he was a spark plug at the old YMCA, recalled is the planting of bold ideas that while being worked on attract new and better ideas and the result is even bolder and better than the original idea.

Bob Cameron and his wife were enthusiastic participants at this current planning conference as he was as every previous effort Moncton has made to redefine itself. Moncton is actually quite accomplished at the visioning process.

Bob has a history with Moncton all the way back to when the Beatles were radical music and the rock and roll dance band, the Gem-Tones ruled the dances at the Y, as Moncton's old social center was called by teens of my age. Robert ( Bob ) Cameron is the original property guy with a lengthy career built in managing the interests of the Sobey's Empire family in Moncton that includes Highfield Square.

Now, 31 years after Highfield Square Mall redefined and refocused Moncton’s downtown on Highfield and Main Streets as the defining corner, his organization will play a huge role in the commercial architecture and buildings that will redefine Vaughn Harvey Blvd and Main Street as the new central corner of Downtown Moncton.

Watch for the new Sobey’s Store, the new wine and spirits super store by NBLCC, and other structures that are still growing in fertile commercial minds for the linking of the Riverview Bridge with Vaughn Harvey Downtown.

Bob has been an enthusiast for growth and community rebuilding spirit and was among the very few who have been participating in the economic renewal choir practices since 1989's Symposium 2000 outlined an ambitious future planning document highlighting the potential in call centre’s as employment opportunities and perhaps to dream of a new, International Airport for Moncton.

Attending that oringinal 1989 spring vision quest was Stan Davis, the futurist and author of Future Forward who came to Moncton and said, get ready for the digital society and telecommunications and build a new digital economy for Moncton. Bob was there then and he was there on Saturday night with his quiet, positive, infectious enthusiasm.

Bob Cameron nudges things along and is a force in the growing role of DMI as an activist economic development agency.

He and many of the other 200 people that participated in the Group Think Future Forward Moncton 2006 are continuing a fine tradition, and one that has served Moncton well. The key to having a plan is having a process to create a plan and then reacting to the dynamic plan as new unimagined opportunities come along, which in turn brings more un-intended consequences and benefits. This all occurs from harnessing the energy in an intitial plan to make something happen.

The key to any community's economic growth is the shared appetite to make something happen. A good planning exercise puts you and your community in gear for when the real economic development opportunity comes along. Developers look at your dreams and see where their profit point lies and then make things happen.

Why I am taking time to write this and to point this out is to present a lesson from recent history from which we can learn and renew our enthusiasm in order to make a commitment as a community to implementing this new plan, regardless of whether it appears at first blush to be sensible, or even possible.

There were ghosts at the Saturday Night Dream fest, last night and while George Rideout is very much alive as a sitting Judge, his community involvement days are over ( alas, alack ), and now he adjudicates disputed greed in his courtroom and hopes that his dreams for Moncton get completed by those who have come after him as Mayor.

The other ghost was former MP Gary MacAuley who played a pivotal role in getting the first drops of Federal government funding attracted to Moncton in the early 80’s to help jump start Moncton's revival from a streetscape that resembled a deserted Colorado mining town where the saloon doors are blowing in the wind and the street is full of tumbleweed. Moncton was not quite deserted in 1980, but the odd person could get drunk and pass out on Main Street and still wake up in the morning not having been hit in the deserted street by a moving vehicle.

The Downtown’s storefronts were boarded up and the gallows joke was that Moncton looked like Berlin after the bombing. Not quite an accurate description, but things were tough and the street was old and tired. The remedy that MP MacAuley and Mayor Rideout and his shell shocked council of the time were told was available was federal grants and matched funds to renew infrastructure. It took some getting used to and considerable political brokering to gain acceptance.

Everyone to a man and woman wanted a gift from Ottawa, a free pass to economic development in replacement of the CN Shops, the former Swift’s meat plant and the closing of the Eaton’s catalogue regional fulfillment centre.

Then, the reality of the offer became apparent. Instead of money for job creation or even investment in a company to move into Downtown Moncton and create economic growth and investment, what the City was being offered was only money to rebuild the sidewalks and renew the streetscape. This single refusal to underwrite a forced move of a company to Moncton or some form of Federal inducement set Moncton’s future.

With no alternative but to do nothing and die a slow tax base death, Moncton reluctant council decided to make lemonade out of the federal lemons and helped to establish Moncton’s cando attitude towards self directed economic growth. The construction of sidewalks spawned the youthful and artistic bilingual café society that has sprung up around Downtown Moncton on those controversial brick pit sidewalks, and all are the result of that hard lesson in political economics.

Commnuities have to take responsibility for their own economic strategy, their own growth and there is no mana coming from another level of government. Moncton got the message and drank the tough love political kool aid and never looked back.

The rebuild Downtown proponents’ argument was that the Main Street should be like a well groomed front walk in front of a prosperous home. Even if the inhabitants were feeling like the Sheriff was at the door with the eviction notice. Put on a postive face and offer a postive home for visitors.

A home that people can be proud of to live in it and those visiting can sense the pride on display, and perhaps decide to move in nearby and join the community. 25 years later Moncton and Dieppe together are draining the rural populations of Northern New Brunswick as the natural resource processing industries strangle on high Canadian dollars and cheap third world labour and resource royalties.

Moncton's so called Moncton Miracle started with the 3 year process of rebuilding the main street from a wide street with narrow sidewalks that allowed for onstreet parking in front of businesses, and then replaced it with wide sidewalk designs and narrow car passages with limited short term transit pause zones.

This weekend’s creative process of visioning and positive belief in the power of a community to accomplish an agenda that it sets out for itself, came as a result of that single act of rebuilding the full length of Downtown Moncton’s streetscape 25 years ago. That is what I mean by achieving a position of start where the success we enjoy today as an economic platform provides the confidence to plan big and build bigger.

Today's Moncton sidewalk cafe society that stretches from Reid's fledgling coffee tables down to the doubled sided food court at Main and Botsford Streets, is a result of that forward thinking and risk. The execution and renewal up the side streets created the neighborhood feel of Downtown Moncton that is so supportive and visitor complimented today.

The Saturday night reveal of the planning sessions called for creating interconnected neighborhoods along St. George Street from deep into the historic east end of Steadman & King Streets area and then rolling west in waves of induced greenery and sidewalk cafe societies until you come up against a Vaughan Harvey Blvd. Coffee society economics will not solve everything but it helps.

That Blvd was once the main access line to the now vanished CN Rail Shops and the mainline to Nelson, Miramichi and points north is probably not recalled by participants. The remaining spur line at Pacific Avenue at the Coliseum Entrance at Killam is part of that old multi line set of tracks that went under the St George Street overpass to gain entrance to the old Franklin Yards, about where the AOL office buildings and Sportsplex are standing today.

The creative minds are onto something as there has been some half hearted attempts to take advantage of the wide access pathway of land left over from the multiple rail passage way and Vaughn Harvey has the makings for a new central core commuter access area and front door for Downtown Moncton.

It needs more flags, more center core presentation of flowers and design flourishes and act as the central connector boulevard in the European sense of the word and design and carry on into the front entrance of the Moncton Hospital, linking Moncton north at Mountain Road and the deepest access points of Riverview and the scenic rural reaches of Albert County’s attractions.

The Urban planner, using multi-media slides and overlays of European sidewalks meets the best of Manhattan and old Toronto, warned of not letting an ugly and poorly designed and populated Vaughn Harvey, simply dump people onto the wonderful and striking bridge design over the river to Riverview.

Think Grand Promenade. Put the Grand in Moncton and Riverview.

They envision this same treatment of creating wide and heavily populated storefronts at street level with multi-tenant residences on the three and four story skylines showing up all along the new Assumption Blvd and building out Main Street West and extending east to Dieppe, to begin to live up to Moncton's muli-lingual reputation as the Maritime’s regional center for community, commerce and entertainment.

The point of this inter-weaving of the old ideas and how they created a modern day platform for all the things that we love about Moncton today, is that it is time to kick it up a notch in Moncton, and have design discipline and direction in what governments approve and support in terms of investment in the Downtown Moncton core. To encourage political leaders to realize that decisions made today will have a huge impact in 25 years, or in looking back from 2031 as we do today on decisions taken in 1981.

What this post and the nostalgic one about Moncton that I wrote two days ago are about and why they are so long ( mostly because I absolutely love writing and postulating about the future ), is to give heart and courage to the movers and shakers that are the new breed of community leaders and political administration in Moncton today. Plan on.

While the big names of the last 25 years are cooling their coupons in Florida, suffering the purgatory of judicial enclosure, and living the life of pensioning boomers, the next level of success is being designed for building now the by next generation of cando Monctonians.

The young artists and entrepreneurs and new administration leadership like Ben Champoux and Catherine Dallaire of City Hall and Daniel Allain of DMI and the governors of those organizations, are beginning to make their contribution to move Moncton from achieving a condition of start as a sustainable and viable economic community with a reasonably attractive quality of life; to now take aim at making Moncton a Great City in the finest tradition of European financial and commercial capitals.

A grand city of commerce that is recognized across Canada for getting the balance right between the needs of local artistic community expression, family security and employment opportunities, and the need for every civilization to reach beyond itself and define it's generation in the buildings, pathways, streetscapes and visitor attractions that make up a generation's legacy.

This is what municipal dreams and bold visions are made of.

Moncton is moving well beyond a condition of getting beyond a starting point for economic growth and greatness because the platform is strong.

Moncton is now poised like a blank easel to become Atlantic Canada's great City of Commercial success, if not entrepreneurial center of excellence, in how it generates sustaining employment and surrounds itself with the sustaining natural beauty of pride in ownership and providing a meaningful quality of community life.

Bravo Moncton for daring to dream and dreaming about what it can dare to do.

Resurgo indeed.