The Guardian
Letters of the Day
Friday December 1, 2006

Kudos and Criticism for Mr. Banks

THUMBS UP

Editor:

I saw the article commenting on Tim Banks’ opinion of the Stratford town plan in your Tuesday edition, and immediately thought:  cartoons, succinctly put (‘Stratford waterfront concept unacceptable, unrealistic: Banks’, The Guardian, November 29, 2006)
               
Mr. Banks is dead on the money, and while we might have the potential to disagree about what business should go where, attracting some business and more residential development on lots larger than 60 feet of frontage is what the town should be doing.
              
Parking lots with trees, one resident of the Dale Drive area call the concept.
               
Roughly $200,000 has been spent on the cartoons.  Maybe it’s about time to cut our losses, which is what a business would do, and junk the plan.
               
A little realistic today-kind-of-thinking would be more than acceptable.

N. Bruce Kelloway,

Stratford 

THUMBS DOWN

Editor:
               
I am writing to comment on the article “Stratford waterfront concept unacceptable, unrealistic:  Banks’ (The Guardian. November 28, 2006)
               
Mr. Banks is one of the many people who operates a business in Stratford, but this does not give him the right to call our development plan a cartoon and a fairytale.  Mr. Banks should realize that what was presented by Ekistics Planning and Design of Halifax was a concept plan. 

As a concept plan, it is merely demonstrating what is possible and merely provides residents with an idea of what Stratford may look like in the future.  Whether there are pictures of ponds in the middle of private enterprise’s parking lots is not the point—it is a concept.  I wonder if he would be calling it a cartoon if the town council had approved his last request for development of a big box store.
         
The Town of Stratford has the mandate and support from its citizens to move forward with development plans for the town.  This includes hiring a planning and design firm to give us some sort of idea of what the future development of the town would look like.

 

Brian Murray

Stratford