The future of Tyra El Tyrannosaurus is still in the air, but that does not prevent him from leaving a great mark on Drumheller’s next civic elections.
Aj Frey, a local businessman who touched a request for 25,000 names to try to maintain the 25 -meter extinction tourist attraction, is postulated to the City Council.
And he says that Tyra runs with him on the ballot.
“Whether you become an electoral problem or not, I’m going to do it,” Frey said in an interview. “I felt that gave me a little advantage because people will know immediately, [saying] ‘Oh, that’s the boy of dinosaurs. “
Frey hopes to take advantage of Tyra to send a message that residents need more voice about how the broader problems in the community are handled.
“The city needs to do a better job when making a return to the locals that currently,” he said.
The vote is scheduled for October 20, which is prior to an ongoing engineering report on what to do with Tyra.
She is an iconic structure that, for a quarter of a century, has dominated the horizon of the city with dinosaurs theme, located in the rich territory of Badland’s dinosaur bones northeast of Calgary.
Tyra houses 150,000 visitors a year, serving as a backdrop for hundreds of thousands of photos and selfies.
Tourists can climb 106 stairs through Tyra’s bowels to stand inside his mouth and look down. A close ice cream support offers fossils, t -shirts and dinosaurs toys.
The city of 8,400 is invoiced as the world capital of dinosaurs. Home of the famous Royal Tyrrell Museum, the community also has dinosaurs statues that seem to leave a cartoon of the Flintstones.
Tyra’s future was questioned in March, when Drumheller and the Chamber of Commerce of the District, which has the attraction, said the structure would be disassembled when the lease contract was exhausted in 2029.
The announcement resulted in a public protest, including Frey’s request, asking to be saved. The city councilors demanded meetings with the camera and trips to Drumheller.
Now an engineering study is being carried out to see how much work, and money, it will cost to renew the aged icon.
Phillips wool, the current president of the Drumheller Chamber, is one of the three candidates looking for the position of mayor. In an interview, Phillips said Tyra is certainly part of the electoral debate.
“I think there are important problems in our community, and I hope we concentrate on their breadth and in those who affect our daily life. There will certainly be people who bring [Tyra] At the table, “he said.
“I think the reality is that it is a community asset that contains memory for all. I think the next step is to work with partners, the valuation of the options and the use of solid data to reach the decision.”
The current mayor of Drumheller, Heather Colberg, does not run again and will be out of the office when the engineering report is expected to be delivered on November 1.
Colberg called him a frustrating piece of unfinished work.
“I have absolutely worked on all the efforts I could to solve it before leaving, but, unfortunately, I do not have control of the engineering study, so we have to trust that as soon as it is ready, they will free it to the city,” he said in an interview.
She said as a citizen that she will still be perplexed by Tyra.
“I will not give up letting some selected people think they have control of something important to the valley,” he said.
“You can’t know how the world’s largest dinosaur capital in the world and simply knock down the dinosaur.”
