After yesterday’s press conference on CP rail yard revitalization, infill housing and the new entertainment centre (i.e. stadium), Mayor Pat Fiacco’s senior advisor Mark Rathwell invited journalists into a room with a window facing the overly complained-about downtown plaza. From this height — we were on City Hall’s 15th floor — you can get a sense of how the thing’s going to work when it’s finally finished by (fingers crossed) the end of July.

This view gives a good, fresh perspective on the construction, which obviously looks like hell up close because construction always does. The curve of the plaza folding into Victoria Park is fetching. And Rathwell says the concrete will be covered with paying paving stones. Pretty!

Look. Obviously, prairie dog writers love criticism, griping and petty nit-picking as much as anybody but there’s been wayyy too much bitching* around this project. The current simmering hostility is  premature. Just a little more patience, people, and then we can praise, slam and/or shrug our shoulders at this ambitious project properly and fairly. Deal?

*prairie dog–exactly the correct amount of negativity since 1993.