The City of New Westminster is sending letters to four property owners on Columbia Street this week to say that the city’s buying, and if you’re not selling—well, don’t worry, you soon will be.

Court-approved expropriation may be required so the city can get its hands on an entire block of our main drag, from Eighth Street to Begbie Street.

And in 2013, if all goes well, beaming members of city council will cut the ribbon on a gleaming, 80,000-square-foot multi-use facility on the property that faces the Salvation Army building, part of the city’s continuing campaign to reorganize the Downtown in a way that makes sense, and give people some much-needed services and amenities too.

But so far, as excited as some politicians were last week when the site for the new facility was announced, the question is: What, exactly, are we getting excited about?

What is a “multi-use facility?”

That term says about as little as the words “infrastructure,” “cereal” or “high tech.”

What are we talking about here?

Will it be a convention centre? Not really.

A recreation centre? Sort of.

An arts centre? Maybe a little bit.

A new city hall? Well, maybe a slice of one.

To be fair, the planning still has a ways to go, and the city’s been given tight timelines from the BC Lottery Corporation, which is footing the $35-million tab as a way of thanking New West for hosting a place for seniors to sign over their pension cheques (AKA, a casino).

The lottery money is called Development Assistance Compensation (DAC), and the city hired a group of consultants to assemble a wish list for the new Downtown facility based on what they believe people are clamouring for. The list is also guided by a DAC requirement that the project serve “economic development needs” in some way.

That’s why today, the amorphous multi-use civic facility could just as well be called Residents’ Laundry List of Hopes and Dreams.

It’s a laundry list that includes conference and banquet space, a new home for the museum and archives, a new theatre seating about 400, a fitness centre, an “Early Childhood Development Hub”, art and music studios and a satellite city hall.

There are several more uses outlined as possibilities in the working paper prepared last July by the consultant, Cornerstone Planning Group.

And really, all of these things are pretty cool, because the rapidly-growing Downtown has so many niches to fill.

If the city were to include everything on the wish list, though, the new facility wouldn’t just cover a single block—it would encompass half of the Downtown.

So with “only” 80,000 square feet to work with, 2010 will be the year of tough decisions.

As for me, I’m having trouble getting my head around the idea of shoving so much stuff into one building.

Usually, when you need a library, say, or a rec centre, you build one.

You don’t build a library/rec centre/funeral home/ice cream parlour.

But why not? After all, we are talking about a building stretching an entire block.

And it sounds like even within the existing constraints, the end result will still serve several different uses, from the arts to business, from families to tourists.

And there’s also the possibility of the city getting even more out of the project through partnerships with developers. The plan is to include 400,000 square feet of residential development, which I assume means a developer will eventually be brought on board to build a tower or two above this new civic facility. The city could leverage a fair bit in return.

It will be interesting to see what happens over the next couple years.

One thing is for sure: this new facility won’t satisfy everyone’s needs.

But regardless, if everything comes together it will become a hub of activity, and be unlike anything we’ve seen in this city thus far.

editor@newwestnewsleader.com