The new Baggage Building has been celebrated as of late. A lot of money was spent on the addition. The addition has a meeting room and a large main floor space that as of now has no real use. Nothing that pays any money to the city anyway. The Art Gallery portion of the all new Baggage Building is in exactly the same place as it was before the building was renovated. Back when it was the Lakehead Visual Arts Building, the same building housed paintings by local artists that could be perused by tourists.
It seems that the more Thunder Bay spends to change things, the more they stay the same. Yes, there now windows but I would have thought that the $8 million given to Brook McIlroy would have bought a more imaginative waterfront park. Personally, I find the place lacking in imagination, colour and fun. There is little to no symmetry in any of the development features . The cost of almost $70 million is not evident at all. As one woman I met put it, “Where did all the money go?” Exactly. Where did all the money go?
So far, we have a splash pool that doubles as a skating ring. The only one of its kind in the city. Its easy to be popular if you have no competition. If that facility was located at say, intercity or Boulevard Lake, would it be less popular? I believe not. Might even be more popular. The development itself offers little to draw visitors to itself that were not already in existence in the Old Marina Park. The park that was bulldozed flat to build what we now have at a cost of almost $70 million. That is it. Really. That is it. The truth that nobody is speaking. Prince Arthur’s Landing is very ordinary. It is all very sad.
