Decision to cancel Centennial Square revitalization postponed until later this month

The City of Victoria’s endeavour to revitalize Centennial Square has been a contentious matter from the get-go. 

The project has been massively criticized due to the removal of a nearly 50-year-old sequoia tree, the removal of the fountain and the implementation of a splash park. 

During this week’s committee of the whole meeting, Councillors Marg Gardiner, Stephen Hammond and Chris Coleman brought forth a motion to halt the revitalization project. 

However, after lengthy discussion, city council moved to push the decision to cancel the project to a later date. 

The matter will be revisited once City staff are able to bring forth a new and updated design. 

These councillors’ motion brought to light the revelation that everything had changed for the Centennial Square project when the City announced its Community Safety and Wellbeing Plan.

The plan required around $10.3 million to be reallocated from ongoing initiatives, which meant the Centennial Square project lost $2.5 million in provincial funding.

“Now that the public has seen our budget, matters that we’ll be dealing [with] or at least starting to deal with tomorrow in a special council meeting, they will see that there are many things that are proposed to be cut,” said Hammond.

“If we drop this redevelopment plan that helps in some way on our budget.”

During the meeting, City staff informed council that since funding reallocation, and the budget for the project had been reduced, some design elements of the project have been scaled down in a way to make the project cheaper for the City.

However, these updates are not yet available to the public. 

Ultimately, the motion was deferred after Councillor Matt Dell put forward a motion to consider the matter again at a later date, once the updated designs are made public. 

Staff say that they should be ready to present the updates to council by the November 27th committee of the whole meeting.

Dell’s motion to defer just barely passed, with a 5-4 vote. 

Councillors Hammond, Gardiner, Coleman and Susan Kim voted against the motion to defer the decision.