Hardly a month after city council voted to disband the Downtown Association, former Ward 1 Coun. Paul Christian was sharply critical this week of what he called the city's 'shameful' management of the downtown plaza.
Council's decision on April 7 to dissolve the 49-year-old business group, bringing all downtown development services under the city's umbrella, was prompted by Mayor Matthew Shoemaker's belief that the city could do the job better.
"I’m confident we can ... deliver better outcomes for our downtown and our community as a whole,” the mayor told SooToday at the time.
Earlier this year, Christian returned to public life as a member of the city's parks and recreation advisory committee (PRAC).
As Ward 1 councillor, he had supported building the downtown plaza when many others opposed it.
But at a PRAC meeting this week, Christian was visibly angry at the city's own track record managing plaza programming
"Last year, the city was supposed to run a Thursday-night beer and social event," he said.
"I went to one, and I was the only person there. As a matter of fact, the staff that were working that event didn't even know there was something scheduled that night.
"The plaza is sort of falling through the cracks. If you remember, it's about an $11-million investment, which was met with a lot of pushback.
"As a former councillor, I know what went into it, the money that went into it. We're letting this slip through the cracks, and it's shameful."
Christian demanded to know who at the city was running the plaza: PRAC or someone else.
"If this group is not responsible definitively for programming the plaza, I need to know who is," Christian said.
Jari Pihelgas, the city's recreation supervisor, responded that the plaza was "under my portfolio until recently, and now we have the plaza under a specific downtown plaza supervisor."
"What we've done recently is hired someone specifically for the plaza for that exact reason. So he's been doing a lot more programming for it recently," Pihelgas said.
"They have their Facebook page specifically for the Sault downtown plaza that you can follow with all the events ... I can get you in contact with that person specifically to discuss some ideas.
"Sure, that that would be fantastic, because I understand digital media and promotion didn't work last year," Pihelgas added.
The supervisor recently hired to address the plaza issues is Josh Ingram, a former executive director of the Downtown Association who most recently served as the the city's area coordinator for special events and sports tourism.