While the Yards concept plan is still being developed by city administration, one city Councillor has come forward with two of his own concept plans for the area.
Councillor Jerry Flegel released the two designs earlier this week, with both featuring a ball park that could be used by the Regina Red Sox, a farmers market area, a cultural centre parking, and seven point two-five open acres left over.
Flegel said the current plans being presented to the public have not impressed developers so far.
“There’s developers in the room going like ‘this is somebody’s pipe dream, this is not realistic and it’s not what it should be,’ and I heard that a few different times, so did the rest of my colleagues and everyone else that was there.”
Flegel said his proposed plan could happen much sooner than what is proposed.
“It would take 30-40 years to build out what’s been proposed,” Flegel said. “This you could build what I suggested today or within the next couple of years, and have a vibrant community right down in an area that has vacant 17.5 acres that’s been sitting empty for seven years.”
Flegel said there’s 7.25 acres of open land in his plans that could be used for anything.
“At this point, I’m kind of leaving the other half alone, maybe right now we’d use it as overflow parking if it got too busy right where we were,” Flegel said. “If somebody wanted to come along and say ‘hey, if that ball diamond’s going to be there, we’ve been waiting for something like that, we want to put ‘X’ there,’ I don’t know what ‘X’ is.”
Flegel said his concepts have drawn interest in developers and the public alike since they were released earlier this week.
