It was too late to change any decisions, but Greater Victoria residents finally got a look at what the planned sewage treatment plant would have looked like.
Seaterra, the commission overseeing the project for the Capital Regional District, says it planned to release the design on Wednesday, but after the McLoughlin Point plant was scuttled, it released the drawings on Tuesday.
The images, which Esquimalt’s design committee said met its criteria, are so different from what everyone imagined that they might have persuaded some opponents if they had been available during the acrimonious public hearings in Esquimalt. Some conceptions had suggested an ugly concrete box that would scream “sewage plant” at anyone entering Victoria’s harbour.
In fact, the designs show a building with a glass front, a green roof and an airy feeling that would stand up well alongside any other building on the harbour.
The provincial government’s insistence on a public-private partnership helped keep the costs down, but also helped keep the design from the public’s view until it was too late. Had the CRD hired an engineering firm in the traditional way, it could have had at least preliminary designs available before it asked Esquimalt to rezone the land. Instead, Seaterra, not wanting to give any of the three competing firms an unfair advantage, had to keep the three designs under wraps throughout the rezoning, so residents and politicians were arguing about something they had never seen.
It was still a sewage plant, but a look at the design might have changed a few minds inside and outside Esquimalt.
