More on B.C. Towns – Penticton

My thanks to all Price Tags readers who sent in comments on PT 96 – the B.C. Towns issue. 
Sean Hodgins mailed in the following, with a few pics worth posting – and I invite readers to do the same for other communities they’d like to highlight.

My compliments to you on an especially powerful and thought-provoking commentary in Price Tags 96.
An observation consistent with your theme concerns Penticton.  My family and I biked a big chunk of the Kettle Valley railway this summer and we ended the ride in Pentiction, where we had left our vehicle, and where we spent our final night in the Okanagan.  Much of Penticton is blighted of course by the very stuff you lament about in your article.  But we were rather charmed by what Penticton had retained and enhanced in its historic downtown where their City Hall, Provincial Court and other institutions are maintained, right on Main street.  

I was almost dreading the thought of staying in Penticton but we found it (the historic downtown) surprisingly a very pleasing atmosphere. There are lots of restaurants, coffee shops, book stores and other things that made our morning walking in the downtown very enjoyable.

The second of the two pictures I’m attaching demonstrates an innovation in creating patio space for pubs and restaurants I had never seen so formalized in a town before. 

 

This may be a seasonal adaptation but the construction of the sidewalk diversion to formalize the patio space worked very well and contributed significantly to the animation of the street (and no doubt to the revenue generation of the tax-paying businesses).  We saw perhaps a dozen of these in close proximity on Main Street and its side streets.
Anyway, the main point was that Penticton seems unusual in combining the (dare I say) benefits of having the big box retailers on its fringe while keeping a great downtown.