During its monthly meeting, Regina City Council pushed through a lot of approvals including the construction of a McDonald’s restaurant in Evraz Place, the banning of plastic checkout bags, and funding to create a city-wide Transit Master Plan.
One big issue of the day was whether or not to build a McDonald’s on the Evraz Place grounds. Some councillors were worried about the commercialization of the grounds and the rather unhealthy menu that McDonald’s offers.
Despite the public push back, council decided to go ahead with the construction. Mayor Michael Fougere says the restaurant will do more good for the community than bad.
“It’s going to mean employment of course, that’s the biggest thing. There’s an alternative for when you’re on the campus at Evraz Place to go to McDonald’s if you want,” said Fougere. “But it’s the beginning of the development of that site for more development, so that Evraz Place will be more self-sufficient financially, and they’ll be able to develop in the future.”
Members of the public were also worried about possible traffic congestion in the area, but Fougere says there is a plan in place to avoid that problem.
“The lineups for getting into McDonald’s, I think, there would not be any congestion when you want to go for takeout or drive-through,” said Fougere. “It won’t congest Lewvan Drive, its more internal to the site.”
Another major issue tackled by City Council was the decision to fund a new Transit Master Plan, that would potentially see the bus hub moved from 11th Avenue to Dewdney.
Mayor Fougere says the $440,000 would go towards developing a transit plan that will work for everyone.
“We’ll look at where a transit hub, if we want one downtown, what it would look like and there’ll be recommendations,” said Fougere. “But, it’s much bigger than that, it’s a transportation system itself, of how we use buses, they way we use them, do we switch to different technology, express routes, a host of different activities that will happen. It’s not just the hub downtown.”
He adds that the funding is part of a 25-year plan, so any immediate changes are not likely.
“This is a 25-year plan, I don’t suspect anything,” said Fougere. “They may be some shorter-term things that we can do, that the consultant may come up with, but at the moment, it’s a much larger, longer term process to go through.”
Council also decided to place a moratorium on licenses for cannabis retailers to allow for the city to take a look at the cannabis market in Regina, and to allow people to vote by mail-in ballot during the fall election.
