Forty years from now, a young lad sitting on his granddad's knee will ask, "Hey grandpa, what did you do during the great Squamish Business Improvement Area debacle?"
The BIA is beginning to sound more like a soon-to-be defunct airline than the pathway to a revitalized downtown.It looks like the days of Triple "A" municipal politics are back; acrimony, allegations and accusations are flying as fast and furiously as hungry eagles beating a hasty retreat from Brackendale after the salmon carcasses dry up.
As our council and local merchants squabble over baubles, the opportunity to realize the full potential of this town slips away. For those of us viewing this charade from the sidelines, the proverbial fecal matter has hit the rotating blades, and we're not talking about recently dropped doggie puddin' gracing the sidewalks of Cleveland Avenue.
Here is a simple message to the folks duking it out over the downtown reno: don't blow this or the moniker ornamenting our banner-strewn streets will soon become "The Misadventure Capital of Canada!"
Just picture a swarm of cruise ship denizens, disembarking from their floating buffet at the top of Howe Sound. Some will explore the charms of our new waterfront development, and a few adventurous types will no doubt partake of the physical activities so readily available here. But the majority likely will not haul their calorie-blossomed frames up the back of the Chief.
More importantly, once our waterborne guests realize that the Heart of Sea to Sky could use a bypass operation, the closest they will come to any semblance of exploratory behaviour downtown will be to hang out for awhile in the virtual reality of the Adventure Centre, or trek around the miles of aisles at the new Wal-Mart.
Many towns south of the border, like LaConnor and Cannon Beach, and Chemainus and Ladysmith on the Island, have become tourist magnets because they have pooled their efforts to offer attractive buildings and prominent, eye-catching historical attractions.
Somehow the little bean counter in all of us realizes that even a small chunk of the $4.5 million we tossed at the Adventure Centre could have gone a long way towards a paint and siding makeover for some of the more disadvantaged structures downtown. But let's not go there. That suggestion could trigger an episode of weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth of Biblical proportions.
If the downtown is everybody's business, and it should be if we buy into the new scheme of things, we need to find a formula that spreads the cost of the BIA plan more fairly.
If not, let's just move on and admit that this town has no center of gravity and is basically a galaxy of fragmented communities.
