Dear Editor: Re: Bosa towers are a ‘golden’ opportunity for tourism, Letters, Record, July 13. In last week’s Letters section, Craig Barton suggested that the Pier West development will be “yet another monument to wealth” if it doesn’t include a publicly accessible viewing platform. I’m concerned it’s going to be exactly that – viewing platform or not.
I have yet to understand how it will serve any benefit to the people of New Westminster. Will suites be priced so that median-income parents can afford to buy and also save for retirement and their children’s post-secondary educations? Are we being offered carbon offsets to mitigate the highly greenhouse gas intensive construction process and the addition of almost 200 new cars to our streets? Are the developers offering an amenity grant so that we can, say, build separated bike lanes on which children can ride safely to school? Will nearby homeowners be compensated for lost views and subsequently diminished property values?
As to whether the towers will be “iconic” (as we have been told), I have doubts about that, too. To be sure, they will be big – but bigness is not a sufficient condition for “iconic,” which usually connotes novelty or innovation. When I think “iconic” I think of New York’s Chrysler Building or the Transamerica Pyramid in San Francisco. The Pier West towers are pretty generic but for the addition of what appears to be a two-dimensional wave pattern made of tinted glass panels – a detail that’s bound to look dated and cheap.
Again, I’d like to know who will benefit from this development, and I hope the Record will provide more information in the weeks to come.
Patrick Parkes, New Westminster
