This is a very positive development. The Keystone Centre is an expensive thing to operate and all additional revenue is a very good thing. And, I most definitely agree with not naming portions after individuals when doing so would leave money on the table. Regardless of what some folks may want to believe the Keystone Centre is already well down the corporate road. The Canad Inn is unavoidable evidence of that.

I’m not sure about the decision to not sell the overall facility naming rights. Clearly, there are major political difficulties of going down that road and not just with our present government. Any change to the Keystone Center is bound to sit poorly with a portion of the local population. On the positive side, I can see how focusing on several subsidiary elements (at lower individual cost) might attract more local corporate interest.

In any case, I’m just glad to see that the board has decided to try making the facility more self-sufficient. It isn’t likely to ever be entirely so, but every little bit helps.

Anyone who knows anything about Pelican can tell you that the level of the lake is critical to the health of the lake. I think this is true of most the lake in the area. The thing is that Pelican is most valuable as a viable fish habitat and sailing lake. Left to its own devices (i.e. with no reliable natural inflow) the lake would likely be neither. It makes no sense that the minor habitat of the inlet should dictate the management of the whole lake.

What bothered me about this fight was the escalation of the rhetorical battle without (so it appeared) any formal discussion. I’ll admit that I don’t know a lot about the ecological issues but looking at the geography of Devil’s Lake it seems plausible that the basin contains some unique organisms. And, in any case, I don’t see the point of having a boundary waters treaty if it’s not invoked over a dispute like this one.

Their website doesn’t have a lot of detail. It does they’re planning for “a multipurpose community enterprise housing businesses, offices, shops, a day care, a seniors’ center, an interpretive museum, and a restaurant.” Without denying the ambitiousness of the project described, I must say that I am a little disappointed. As noted in the earlier post, I’m interested in new uses that really take advantage of the elevator architecture functionally. Other than the possibility of having the restaurant at the top, there doesn’t seem to be much of that here.

Of course, now that I’ve thought about the climbing facility idea more I’m beginning to wonder if it’s as structurally feasible as I thought. If I wasn’t so allergic to grain dust I’d probably try and get a tour inside an elevator to find out.

The ideas that I’ve heard include turning them into museums or putting a restaurants up top. The museum one is obvious, and it has happened (at least in Inglis). I don’t know if any of the restaurant proposals have actually happened.

There’s one idea that’s been clunking around in my head for a while, but I’ve not yet seen it mentioned anywhere else. I think an elevator would make a great rock climbing facility. A lot of climbing walls are put into normal sized buildings, which means they aren’t very tall or explorable like a real rock face would be. But, an elevator would allow the creation of some truly awesome walls both inside and out.

The really interesting part is that on the inside, in addition to being all-season and all-weather, it might be possible to make the walls easily movable. Most of the climbing walls I’ve seen (an admittedly small quantity) are static except for the movable holds, but I think it would be cool if you could also move the wall portions. I think the structure of an elevator lends itself to that kind of reconfiguration because there are so many different ways to build supports.

(Note to self: Google this.)