Random Access

Mississauga's city centre has never been short of at least two commodities: grand visions and cars.
The grand visions have come from many sources, including homegrown developer Bruce McLaughlin who built Square One out of a cow field, to the cluck of consultants (that's the official term for a group of paid dreamers) who have produced a huge pile of reports on how to transform the corner of Hurontario St. and Burnhamthorpe Rd. W. into a people place.
As the City prepares to host yet another public meeting tonight as part of what has turned into the eternal building of a downtown, listen to the words that were written in The Mississauga News' 1982 community guide.
In that magazine, writers were gazing into their crystal ball, as everyone is wont to do with the city centre, to see how things could turn out.
"Ten years from now this new downtown will begin to change drastically as more high-rise, high-density buildings of startling design emerge on the Mississauga skyline," says the piece.
"By 1992, faddishly garbed teens may roller skate on a rooftop rink atop a 14-storey office complex, a skyward addition to the Square One Shopping Centre which, by then, will have been expanded outwards to include up to six major department stores. A network of walkways will link the civic centre to other innovative buildings in the city centre and an expansion of Square One."
Later on we are told, "here sidewalk cafes, covered walkways and a pedestrian-oriented plaza dotted with greenery and reflecting pools would enhance a new downtown Mississauga planners and politicians strive to make a reality."
Keep on striving guys. We've still got a long way to go, more than three decades after Square One opened.
The city centre has always seemed to be through the roof on rhetoric but way short on real delivery.
Yes, there are legitimate reasons for many of the problems that have plagued the core: McLaughlin's financial woes in the ’80s, the go-slow mentality of conservative British-based Hammerson which became the major player following McLaughlin, badly-timed economic slumps and the high cost of building underground parking in the rock-hard soil.
The Hershey Centre was scheduled to go downtown at one time, but that golden opportunity was missed.
How can a city centre built from scratch to avoid the mistakes of the past have no major park in the downtown core?
Where are the bistros and hole-in-the-wall clubs and niche art stores we were always promised?
As slews of condos finally start to get built along Burnhamthorpe Rd. W., the City is looking for input tonight about what citizens want to see in their downtown.
A company called PPS (does that mean it was hired as a really, really late afterthought?) has been hired from New York to tell us what we already know: that there needs to be more green space, pedestrian opportunities and fewer concessions to the almighty car.
They're floating the idea of closing the short sections of road just north and south of City Hall that link it to the Central Library and Living Arts Centre respectively. Great idea.
Councillors should do that yesterday. It would send a message that the City wants to take back the downtown from the car and give it to the public, to whom it rightfully belongs.
In a book he wrote years ago about his planning philosophy McLaughlin said he was striving to "structure the megalopolis and create a centre with its own heart.
"Mississauga is a bold concept," he added. "It is the first urban experiment in North America coming to grips with the totality of city life."
Shouldn't that totality include a much more human face on our city centre?