DV2020 Annual Report 2006

This annual report embodies some interesting and important milestones: the fifth anniversary of the DVCA; the near-culmination of the Downtown Plan Review; the quarter-mark (four years) of the elapsed time between our first downtown conference and the year—2020—by which time we hope to see our collective, emergent vision for downtown come true; and, on the horizon, a Victoria municipal election.

Before launching into the details of downtown activities and trends, let’s reflect for a moment.

The DVCA was created in 2003 at the instigation of former City Manager Joe Martignago who believed that, apart from any City initiatives and programs, downtown would benefit from a higher level of stewardship, engagement and concern from a broad-based coalition of community interests working independent of, but in collaboration with, the City.

Those of us who were there from the beginning spent many a meeting discussing how a new, unofficial organization could make itself relevant, while being careful not to duplicate the work of other interests, or raising concerns about entitlement or ‘turf.’

We hit on the idea of the Downtown 2020 conference series, which brought in some out-of-Victoria speakers to enrich our own thinking, and which attracted an astonishing four hundred people to talk about their own visions for downtown and to work together to consolidate good ideas into a unified vision. These attendees represented input from individual citizens and almost every organization with a real and perceived stake in the state and future of downtown.

Forming voluntary communities-of-interest, people worked in committee or group format at, and after, the conferences to articulate detailed visions, recommendations, and plans of possible action in nine different focus areas. As these materials came in during the weeks and months following the conference, they were presented in formal and informal ways to City staff and Council. Honestly, it was a prodigious and heartfelt effort by an extraordinary range and number of self-selected citizens.

On reflection, we believe it may have been useful to have had more of an explicit understanding with the City as to the relationship between the DVCA and the City; too often, things seemed to fall into ‘receive and file’ mode, and while there was generous acknowledgement for our good work, there was little sense that the City wished to engage in an active partnership, or that the City had given much thought to how the conferences and all of our follow-up work fit into larger City intentions.

Specifically, there was an unfortunate disconnect between the highly successful and inclusive public process of Downtown 2020 and the approach of the Downtown Plan Review, initiated by the City the next year. Certainly, in our view, an opportunity was lost to work collaboratively and for the City to utilize the demonstrated capacity and credibility of the DVCA to animate the public process portions of the Downtown Plan Review. Effectively, over time, we were taken to be just one more constituency—not an organization that spoke with the unified voice of all downtown interests.

With that said, it’s also important to remember that much of what the DVCA has been all about—many of its concerns, much of its scope—has been embodied in some very significant changes made in the last two years within Victoria’s Planning Services Division. Planning Services now has a team dedicated exclusively to long-range planning and urban design—features that were clearly identified as required within the City’s planning structure.

With all of this history noted, we report that the DVCA as an organization has had a low-key, rather than a highly public, year…mostly, a year of monitoring; which doesn’t mean that this has been a quiet, issue-free year for downtown. We record the following highlights.


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DOWNTOWN VICTORIA COMMUNITY ALLIANCE MAY, 2008 ANNUAL REPORT No. 3 This annual report embodies some interesting and important milestones: the fifth anniversary of the DVCA; the near-culmination of the Downtown Plan Review; the quarter-mark (four years) of the elapsed time between our first downtown conference and the year—2020—by which time we hope to see our collective, emergent vision for downtown come true; and, on the horizon, a Victoria municipal election. Before launching into the details of downtown activities and trends, let’s reflect for a moment. The DVCA was created in 2003 at the instigation of former City Manager Joe Martignago who believed that, apart from any City initiatives and programs, downtown would benefit from a higher level of stewardship, engagement and concern from a broad-based coalition of community interests working independent of, but in collaboration with, the City. Those of us who were there from the beginning spent many a meeting discussing how a new, unofficial organization could make itself relevant, while being careful not to duplicate the work of other interests, or raising concerns about entitlement or ‘turf.’ We hit on the idea of the Downtown 2020 conference series, which brought in some out-of-Victoria speakers to enrich our own thinking, and which attracted an astonishing four hundred people to talk about their own visions for downtown and to work together to consolidate good ideas into a unified vision. These attendees represented input from individual citizens and almost every organization with a real and perceived stake in the state and future of downtown. Forming voluntary communities-of-interest, people worked in committee or group format at, and after, the conferences to articulate detailed visions, recommendations, and plans of possible action in nine different focus areas. As these materials came in during the weeks and months following the conference, they were presented in formal and informal ways to City staff and Council. Honestly, it was a prodigious and heartfelt effort by an extraordinary range and number of self-selected citizens. Much of this work is archived on our DVCA website and can be viewed at http://dv2020.ca/archives.html. On reflection, we believe it may have been useful to have had more of an explicit understanding with the City as to the relationship between the DVCA and the City; too often, things seemed to fall into ‘receive and file’ mode, and while there was generous acknowledgement for our good work, there was little sense that the City wished to engage in an active partnership, or that the City had given much thought to how the conferences and all of our follow-up work fit into larger City intentions. Specifically, there was an unfortunate disconnect between the highly successful and inclusive public process of Downtown 2020 and the approach of the Downtown Plan Review, initiated by the City the next year. Certainly, in our view, an opportunity was lost to work collaboratively and for the City to utilize the demonstrated capacity and credibility of the DVCA to animate the public process portions of the Downtown Plan Review. Effectively, over time, we were taken to be just one more constituency—not an organization that spoke with the unified voice of all downtown interests. With that said, it’s also important to remember that much of what the DVCA has been all about—many of its concerns, much of its scope—has been embodied in some very significant changes made in the last two years within Victoria’s Planning Services Division. Planning Services now has a team dedicated exclusively to long-range planning and urban design—features that were clearly identified as required within the City’s planning structure. With all of this history noted, we report that the DVCA as an organization has had a low-key, rather than a highly public, year…mostly, a year of monitoring; which doesn’t mean that this has been a quiet, issue-free year for downtown. We record the following highlights. Homeless and Related Street-Life Impacts on Downtown It is likely that no single issue so dominated (and continues to dominate) the media or the wider public conversation about downtown. This has been a year featuring the opening of the Our Place housing and social facility on Pandora Avenue; the crisis surrounding the Cormorant Street needle exchange, and its (to-date unsuccessful) search for a new home; the insertion of new social housing in a Rock Bay location, to vociferous concern about flawed process, lack of consultation, and outright opposition to the site; the highly heralded Mayor’s Task Force on homeless issues, featuring a largely unfulfilled pledge to find housing for 60 or so of the core needy; and more. Media commentary has asked, with increasing frequency, why organized responses have been so late in coming and so underwhelming. Much of this commentary has observed the Victoria tendency to form task forces instead of action plans, and has noted the negative impacts on downtown business and social tone. One positive development is the recent opening of the new Youth Hospitality Training Centre at 679 Herald Street, an innovative, preventative approach to downtown youth related street issues, general youth unemployment and to mitigating the effect of the current labour shortage in the hospitality industry. Housing Affordability While not limited to downtown, or identified specifically as a downtown issue, housing affordability throughout the Capital Region has been, and remains, a tremendous challenge in rental and ownership markets. Housing affordability challenges create several conditions that impact downtown directly. First, new downtown condominiums purchased either by investors or non-occupying owners carry, if rented, fairly lofty rents—manageable by some in Victoria’s incredibly tight rental market, but well beyond the means of those seeking rental accommodation at a modest cost. Second, the emerging rental market downtown does nothing to meet the needs of the low income service community and, of course, those who require government assistance to meet their shelter needs. This only intensifies street issues in and around downtown. Last, the current affordability situation tends to push many working people toward the suburban periphery to find relatively affordable market housing; and this puts additional pressure on the road network and downtown parking infrastructure. Clearly, some form of housing innovation is necessary in and around downtown, especially at a time of historic low unemployment. Some experiments are being undertaken to create stylized small suites (‘the housing equivalent of the Smart Car’), as a way of introducing significantly lower affordability thresholds, but it would be early now to try to measure the impacts of this option. Current and Planned Downtown Residential Development Significant new development is in various stages ranging from proposal to completion in and around downtown. Projects include: Bayview, the Roundhouse and Dockside Green in Vic West; the Hudson and Radius (currently stalled and seeking new financing) at the north end of downtown; Centro, the Juliet, 834 Johnson, and 819 Yates in mid-town; 930 Fort Street and the recently completed Wave in Harris Green; the Aria, the Falls, Chelsea, Cherry Bank, and Parkside at the south end. An excellent source for complete information is the valuable website www.vibrantvictoria.ca. Current and Planned Downtown Office/Commercial Development Notable downtown office-commercial developments include Gateway Green, the office tower component of the Radius project (currently stalled, as noted above), and the Atrium, a redevelopment of much of the Telus holdings on Yates, Blanshard and Johnson. You may follow this link to access the Colliers International Victoria Office Market Report for the last quarter of 2007: http://www.colliersmn.com Development Trends and Impacts Added together, the above development, when completed, will add more than three thousand residential units in and close to downtown (+/- six thousand new residents), and a half-million feet or more of new office-commercial representing somewhere between one and two thousand workers. These are significant impacts, likely to materialize over the next five years. We note, though, that some softening is taking place currently—slowdowns in the residential sales cycle and some projects being put on hold. This appears to be industry recognition that the market is not bottomless, and that complexities in the US housing and financial sectors may not have direct impacts here, but are colouring industry optimism and likely affecting decision-making. BIA The Downtown Victoria Business Association - is now in it's fourth year, and has become an positive and integral part of downtown. In the five-year plan of the Downtown Victoria Business Association, the 2008 budget is identified as being $842,699. This includes $ 278,090.67 (33%) for Administration, $ 227,528.73 (27%) for Clean & Safe & Beautification, $ 303,371.64 (36%) for Marketing & Events and $33,707.96 (4%) for Networking & Partnerships. The energy and enthusiasm of General Manager Ken Kelly and the dedication of many downtown business leaders has created what may arguably be the biggest success story from the Downtown 2020 process. The Clean and Safe team provides jobs for youth at risk who presently remove about 2800 pieces of graffiti a year as well as helping businesses with used syringe removal. With the help of grants and leadership from the marketing program businesses have cooperated to form and promote specialized districts such as the Historic Chinatown District, the Design District, LoJo, and the Broad Street and Trounce Alley area. Status of Downtown Plan Review--Update In November 2007, Planning Services presented four options in “support of the vision of a vibrant, mixed-use and healthy downtown.” These options were available for public review in a consultation process. They were: Option 1 – In Town Summary Option 2 – Up Town Summary Option 3 – Cross Town Summary Option 4 – Around Town Summary Each of these options can be studied in some detail by clicking the link below. The individual options are followed by a particularly useful ‘pros and cons’ page that may help the reader to clearly understand the difference between options. http://www.victoria.ca/cityhall/departments_plnpln_downtown.shtml On April 22nd of this year, Planning Services submitted a report to Mayor and Council based on public input and professional analysis. The executive summary of that report can be viewed by following this link: http://www.victoria.ca/cityhall/pdfs/plnpln_downtown_cotw080422.pdf The summary recommends that Council “direct staff to develop a draft Downtown Plan Update on the basis of Option 3 – Cross Town, with the inclusion of public park space and harbour pathway extensions adjacent to Rock Bay.” From the perspective of the DVCA, this is certainly an appealing option in that it envisages a large development/redevelopment footprint for downtown, and liberalizes some of the development conditions in Harris Green, North Park, the Douglas Spine and significant portions of Rock Bay. It also comes closest to acknowledging the widespread public perception of downtown as extending north at least to Bay Street. Heritage Revitalization Highlights Heritage issues have garnered some headlines this year, as the City moves to include some of its outstanding mid-century building inventory toward heritage status; as Le Fevre and Company progresses on its significant redevelopment of the former CRD headquarters and Oriental Hotel on lower Yates Street; as an out-of-town developer moves ahead with the redevelopment of the building formerly housing Steamers Pub—also on lower Yates Street, and adjacent to the Le Fevre activity; and as concerns grew about the increasingly distressed Janion Hotel on Store Street and the empty heritage property mid-block in Waddington Alley—which was the subject of an owner’s request for demolition. The biggest heritage story, of course, remains the redevelopment of the historic Bay department store into “The Hudson’ condominiums, with a prospective (but still un-named) supermarket on the ground floor. Downtown as a Place of Learning One of the Downtown 2020 working groups prepared a highly animated vision that proposed: “In 2020, the city’s urban core is a leading learning community.” The objective suggested that, by then, “the city enhances its economic, environmental and social conditions on a sustainable and inclusive basis, using lifelong learning as an organizing principle and cultural goal that mobilizes the human, social, built capital and other educational resources within its civic, economic, education, and voluntary/community sectors.” In fact, the Mayor's Task Force on the Downtown Learning Commons completed a report to City of Victoria Council last August. Martin Segger was the DVCA representative on the Task Force. As a result the City of Victoria declared itself a Global Learning City (see below for declaration text). Furthermore the report was referred to the Downtown Planning Task Force for consideration in the process of developing the new Downtown Plan. Most of the Report's objectives and many of its elements are included in the draft Downtown Plan now awaiting final Council approval. In the meantime a core group worked with Councillor Hughes and four UVic School of Business students developing a business plan for a series of Community Learning Festivals to start in the fall of 2006. Plans are now underway for a successful third Festival this Fall. ABC Consulting (Gretchen Brewin, Laura Acton ) was commissioned by the Victoria Public Library under a Literacy Now provincial grant to map the learning agencies in Victoria and recommend a program structure for the advancement of a Learning Commons for literacy across Greater Victoria. This structure is now in place with a full-time executive director. Some recent developments which reflect the findings and recommendations of the task force include the planned move of the Canada West University's campus into the downtown core (planned as part of the Temporarily stalled Radius project at the north end of downtown), the designation of Centennial Square as a preferred future site for a new main-branch library facility, the expansion of the conference centre (currently underway) and allocation of an adjacent site on Belleville for a new Art Gallery of Greater Victoria and Children's museum (both unplanned at the current time). Harbour Walkway On March 5th the City unveiled a design for the Harbour pedestrian and cycling waterfront pathway to connect Ogden Point to Rock Bay. The pathway will not be a developed all at once, but rather will emerge over the long term in response to strategies contained in the City’s greenways plan. The pathway design incorporates elements such as environmental remediation, a changing look and feel as it passes through various districts, and ‘destinations’ that will act as focal points. To see the full design plan visit the following link http://www.victoria.ca/cityhall/departments_plnsrv_green_hrbr.shtml Conclusion of this Report This report finds downtown in an indeterminate state—very much a mixed bag of good and worrisome conditions. On the plus side, there is a significant amount of new residential and office/commercial construction underway and planned. Progress is being made to bring the Downtown Plan Review process to a conclusion with a new suite of policies and tools…and potential, over time, to expand, diversify and enrich the downtown area. Renovations and improvements to Vancouver Street are complete, thus eliminating a bottleneck that rippled through much of downtown. On the other hand, street issues of various kinds continue to negatively affect the tone and economy of downtown. Housing affordability challenges are having downtown impacts. The downtown residential market may soften as markets everywhere respond to some troubling macro-economic signs. The City’s capacity to undertake significant capital initiatives (library, etc.) remains very much in question. Little visible physical improvement or beautification of downtown has taken place recently. DVCA believes that is needs to become more active in the coming year—perhaps doing what it has demonstrated an aptitude for: animating and organizing public conversation about downtown. Certainly, as we are in the second quarter of the timeline leading to 2020, it is time for a fresh public measurement of progress toward the array of goals expressed in the 2020 vision. Downtown Victoria Community Alliance Gene Miller, Board back to top
info@dv2020.ca

Homeless and Related Street-Life Impacts on Downtown

It is likely that no single issue so dominated (and continues to dominate) the media or the wider public conversation about downtown. This has been a year featuring the opening of the Our Place housing and social facility on Pandora Avenue; the crisis surrounding the Cormorant Street needle exchange, and its (to-date unsuccessful) search for a new home; the insertion of new social housing in a Rock Bay location, to vociferous concern about flawed process, lack of consultation, and outright opposition to the site; the highly heralded Mayor’s Task Force on homeless issues, featuring a largely unfulfilled pledge to find housing for 60 or so of the core needy; and more.

Media commentary has asked, with increasing frequency, why organized responses have been so late in coming and so underwhelming. Much of this commentary has observed the Victoria tendency to form task forces instead of action plans, and has noted the negative impacts on downtown business and social tone.

One positive development is the recent opening of the new Youth Hospitality Training Centre at 679 Herald Street, an innovative, preventative approach to downtown youth related street issues, general youth unemployment and to mitigating the effect of the current labour shortage in the hospitality industry.

Housing Affordability

While not limited to downtown, or identified specifically as a downtown issue, housing affordability throughout the Capital Region has been, and remains, a tremendous challenge in rental and ownership markets.

Housing affordability challenges create several conditions that impact downtown directly.

First, new downtown condominiums purchased either by investors or non-occupying owners carry, if rented, fairly lofty rents—manageable by some in
Victoria’s incredibly tight rental market, but well beyond the means of those seeking rental accommodation at a modest cost.

Second, the emerging rental market downtown does nothing to meet the needs of the low income service community and, of course, those who require government assistance to meet their shelter needs. This only intensifies street issues in and around downtown.

Last, the current affordability situation tends to push many working people toward the suburban periphery to find relatively affordable market housing; and this puts additional pressure on the road network and downtown parking infrastructure.

Clearly, some form of housing innovation is necessary in and around downtown, especially at a time of historic low unemployment. Some experiments are being undertaken to create stylized small suites (‘the housing equivalent of the Smart Car’), as a way of introducing significantly lower affordability thresholds, but it would be early now to try to measure the impacts of this option.

Current and Planned Downtown Residential Development

Significant new development is in various stages ranging from proposal to completion in and around downtown. Projects include: Bayview, the Roundhouse and Dockside Green in Vic West; the Hudson and Radius (currently stalled and seeking new financing) at the north end of downtown; Centro, the Juliet, 834 Johnson, and 819 Yates in mid-town; 930 Fort Street and the recently completed Wave in Harris Green; the Aria, the Falls, Chelsea, Cherry Bank, and Parkside at the south end. An excellent source for complete information is the valuable website www.vibrantvictoria.ca.

Current and Planned Downtown Office/Commercial Development

Notable downtown office-commercial developments include Gateway Green, the office tower component of the Radius project (currently stalled, as noted above), and the Atrium, a redevelopment of much of the Telus holdings on Yates, Blanshard and Johnson. You may follow this link to access the Colliers International Victoria Office Market Report for the last quarter of 2007:
http://www.colliersmn.com

Development Trends and Impacts

Added together, the above development, when completed, will add more than three thousand residential units in and close to downtown (+/- six thousand new residents), and a half-million feet or more of new office-commercial representing somewhere between one and two thousand workers. These are significant impacts, likely to materialize over the next five years.

We note, though, that some softening is taking place currently—slowdowns in the residential sales cycle and some projects being put on hold. This appears to be industry recognition that the market is not bottomless, and that complexities in the US housing and financial sectors may not have direct impacts here, but are colouring industry optimism and likely affecting decision-making.

BIA

The Downtown Victoria Business Association - is now in it's fourth year, and has become an positive and integral part of downtown. In the five-year plan of the Downtown Victoria Business Association, the 2008 budget is identified as being $842,699. This includes $ 278,090.67 (33%) for Administration, $ 227,528.73 (27%) for Clean & Safe & Beautification, $ 303,371.64 (36%) for Marketing & Events and $33,707.96 (4%) for Networking & Partnerships. The energy and enthusiasm of General Manager Ken Kelly and the dedication of many downtown business leaders has created what may arguably be the biggest success story from the Downtown 2020 process. The Clean and Safe team provides jobs for youth at risk who presently remove about 2800 pieces of graffiti a year as well as helping businesses with used syringe removal. With the help of grants and leadership from the marketing program businesses have cooperated to form and promote specialized districts such as the Historic Chinatown District, the Design District, LoJo, and the Broad Street and Trounce Alley area.

Status of Downtown Plan Review--Update

In November 2007, Planning Services presented four options in “support of the vision of a vibrant, mixed-use and healthy downtown.” These options were available for public review in a consultation process. They were:
Option 1 – In Town Summary
Option 2 – Up Town Summary
Option 3 – Cross Town Summary
Option 4 – Around Town Summary

Each of these options can be studied in some detail by clicking the link below. The individual options are followed by a particularly useful ‘pros and cons’ page that may help the reader to clearly understand the difference between options.
http://www.victoria.ca/cityhall/departments_plnpln_downtown.shtml

On April 22nd of this year, Planning Services submitted a report to Mayor and Council based on public input and professional analysis. The executive summary of that report can be viewed by following this link:
http://www.victoria.ca/cityhall/pdfs/plnpln_downtown_cotw080422.pdf

The summary recommends that Council “direct staff to develop a draft Downtown Plan Update on the basis of Option 3 – Cross Town, with the inclusion of public park space and harbour pathway extensions adjacent to Rock Bay.”

From the perspective of the DVCA, this is certainly an appealing option in that it envisages a large development/redevelopment footprint for downtown, and liberalizes some of the development conditions in Harris Green, North Park, the Douglas Spine and significant portions of Rock Bay. It also comes closest to acknowledging the widespread public perception of downtown as extending north at least to Bay Street.

Heritage Revitalization Highlights

Heritage issues have garnered some headlines this year, as the City moves to include some of its outstanding mid-century building inventory toward heritage status; as Le Fevre and Company progresses on its significant redevelopment of the former CRD headquarters and Oriental Hotel on lower Yates Street; as an out-of-town developer moves ahead with the redevelopment of the building formerly housing Steamers Pub—also on lower Yates Street, and adjacent to the Le Fevre activity; and as concerns grew about the increasingly distressed Janion Hotel on Store Street and the empty heritage property mid-block in Waddington Alley—which was the subject of an owner’s request for demolition.

The biggest heritage story, of course, remains the redevelopment of the historic Bay department store into “The Hudson’ condominiums, with a prospective (but still un-named) supermarket on the ground floor.

Downtown as a Place of Learning

One of the Downtown 2020 working groups prepared a highly animated vision that proposed: “In 2020, the city’s urban core is a leading learning community.”

The objective suggested that, by then, “the city enhances its economic, environmental and social conditions on a sustainable and inclusive basis, using lifelong learning as an organizing principle and cultural goal that mobilizes the human, social, built capital and other educational resources within its civic, economic, education, and voluntary/community sectors.”

In fact, the Mayor's Task Force on the Downtown Learning Commons completed a report to City of Victoria Council last August. Martin Segger was the DVCA representative on the Task Force. As a result the City of Victoria declared itself a Global Learning City (see below for declaration text). Furthermore the report was referred to the Downtown Planning Task Force for consideration in the process of developing the new Downtown Plan. Most of the Report's objectives and many of its elements are included in the draft Downtown Plan now awaiting final Council approval. In the meantime a core group worked with Councillor Hughes and four UVic School of Business students developing a business plan for a series of Community Learning Festivals to start in the fall of 2006. Plans are now underway for a successful third Festival this Fall. ABC Consulting (Gretchen Brewin, Laura Acton ) was commissioned by the Victoria Public Library under a Literacy Now provincial grant to map the learning agencies in Victoria and recommend a program structure for the advancement of a Learning Commons for literacy across Greater Victoria. This structure is now in place with a full-time executive director.

Some recent developments which reflect the findings and recommendations of the task force include the planned move of the Canada West University's campus into the downtown core (planned as part of the Temporarily stalled Radius project at the north end of downtown), the designation of Centennial Square as a preferred future site for a new main-branch library facility, the expansion of the conference centre (currently underway) and allocation of an adjacent site on Belleville for a new Art Gallery of Greater Victoria and Children's museum (both unplanned at the current time).

Harbour Walkway

On March 5th the City unveiled a design for the Harbour pedestrian and cycling waterfront pathway to connect Ogden Point to Rock Bay. The pathway will not be a developed all at once, but rather will emerge over the long term in response to strategies contained in the City’s greenways plan. The pathway design incorporates elements such as environmental remediation, a changing look and feel as it passes through various districts, and ‘destinations’ that will act as focal points. To see the full design plan visit the following link http://www.victoria.ca/cityhall/departments_plnsrv_green_hrbr.shtml

Conclusion of this Report

This report finds downtown in an indeterminate state—very much a mixed bag of good and worrisome conditions. On the plus side, there is a significant amount of new residential and office/commercial construction underway and planned. Progress is being made to bring the Downtown Plan Review process to a conclusion with a new suite of policies and tools…and potential, over time, to expand, diversify and enrich the downtown area. Renovations and improvements to Vancouver Street are complete, thus eliminating a bottleneck that rippled through much of downtown.

On the other hand, street issues of various kinds continue to negatively affect the tone and economy of downtown. Housing affordability challenges are having downtown impacts. The downtown residential market may soften as markets everywhere respond to some troubling macro-economic signs. The City’s capacity to undertake significant capital initiatives (library, etc.) remains very much in question. Little visible physical improvement or beautification of downtown has taken place recently.

DVCA believes that is needs to become more active in the coming year—perhaps doing what it has demonstrated an aptitude for: animating and organizing public conversation about downtown. Certainly, as we are in the second quarter of the timeline leading to 2020, it is time for a fresh public measurement of progress toward the array of goals expressed in the 2020 vision.

Downtown Victoria Community Alliance

Gene Miller, Board

DOWNTOWN VICTORIA COMMUNITY ALLIANCE

MAY, 2008

ANNUAL REPORT No. 3