To the editor:
Have you walked Bernard Avenue recently? Do you take your visitors for a stroll downtown? Is it any longer your favourite destination?
I suspect not, as having just walked along the lakeshore from the Rotary Marshes to Bernard and up one side and down the other, I was appalled. I remember when Kelowna took such pride in its downtown and made sure the flowers flourished and the street looked its best for our summer season.
What I discovered was a litter-strewn street, cigarette butts everywhere, graffiti covering electrical boxes, grubby, thoroughly disorganized tables and chairs on a string of patios, many empty and cabled together, patchy grass in the rare places it had survived, and several construction sites – including the new unsightly and in my view unnecessary, tourist centre that, other than a hard-to-find gravel path, has made no attempt to remove construction debris or beautify itself to be ready for our tourist season.
Really! Is this the best we can do? Where is our civic pride? It is a great sadness to see our beautiful city ignore its main street.
Sharron Simpson,
Kelowna