Michael Evans is a consistent follower of downtown business affairs. He made a presentation to Council last Tuesday about continued exodus of business from the historic core.
Michael operates a Hardware Store. When he came to town, we had one hardware store and a small population. Wilson's Hardware Store had survived the advent of Canadian Tire and morphed into Home Hardware.
Michael's store has survived against the odds. He continues to participate in discussions which impact on his and other business.
In the past six years, we have had no less than three full scale proposals for a particularly blighted site in a terribly visible location immediately north of Wellington and Yonge, our main intersection.
Centre is the town's oldest street. Older than Wellington.Older than the current alignment of Yonge. The plans were for the North Corner, east of Yonge. Most of the site has been vacant and strewn with rubbish for quarter of a century.A relatively modern single storey building on the corner is abandoned and crumbling ...literally.
It seems the property changes hand with each unsuccessful attempt to develop. As land becomes scarcer, value keeps rising.
Repeated public planning meetings have been held. After months of work by the town's planners and the owners architects, the tedium of listening to the same details over and over is mind-deadening. I can't imagine how it feels for town staff to be working diligently on the site plan, knowing it's likely going nowhere.
Neighbouring residents attend meetings faithfully and provide input. The ever increasing blight undoubtedly offends them most. They are anxious to see renewal.
The last plan met with their approval.
All for nought.
It was referred to the Heritage Citizen Advisory Committee. They commented the historic core height bylaw calls for five storeys therefore the building's height should be reduced.
The height was five storeys at Yonge and stepped back and up from the front and side to accommodate extra suites and sufficient parking.
The design can be seen on Yonge Street in Richmond Hill. It was featured in the business section of the Globe and Mail on January 12th,2010.
A person even peripherally involved is aware of the relationship between economic viability and bankruptcy. We have seen developers go bankrupt.I think our policies and procedures contribute to bankruptcy.They certainly contribute to the cost of building. The condo suites in the Richmond Hill building are $400,000. apiece.
As a public business, dependent on the success of private business, private bankruptcies are not to our advantage. Nor are vacant blighted sites on our main street. Ask any town treasurer.
Still we are content to see the downtown become ever more blighted in order for non-elected, non-accountable advisory citizens to dictate that height of a building in 2010 should be made to conform to a streetscape that's a hundred and sixty years old.
We are required to provide tax rebates for empty stores in our downtown , while spending hundreds of thousands on consultants to yammer interminably at workshops attended by the same few, about airy-fairy impractical ideas that place not a stone upon a stone in renewal of the beloved historic core.
Talk about Nero and His Fiddle.
In the face of Michael's discontent, Mayor Morris spiritedly defended council's policies. Hundreds of thousands of dollars more were spent by this council, as opposed to others, on consultants studying the down town and that was evidence of strong commitment to downtown well-being, the Mayor claims.
Michael did not speak of the three unsuccessful applications for apartment development on the blighted site at the corner of Centre and Yonge. Though he attended all the meetings and urged approval.
The Mayor didn't claim the shift of the Farmers Market from downtown to the town park with convenience of a free band shell for entertainment, hydro and washrooms, has continued to bring business into the downtown core, as initially argued.
Just as well.Since that obviously has not happened.
This conversation will not change during the rest of the term.
Saturday 13 March 2010
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1 comment:
No offence to Mr. Evens and his passion for the downtwon, but....
Has anyone been in this store lately? I mean really. I was downtown at th TD bank one day and I had an item on my TDL to pick up. I thought that I would pop into the hardware store instead of making another stop in the car. I walked in and it was like taking a step back into the 50s. I honestly think some of the items in the front of the store have been on display since the '50s! There were products in boxes in which the box art was so faded from the sun, you could hardly read it. The place is packed with "stuff" - who knows what it all is.
To their credit, I was asked by a young man soon after entering what I would be looking for. I told him, he took me to an approximate area and I found it. You need that sort of service because God knows you could never find anything otherwise.
I was surprised to see a semi-modern cash register. I was expecting to see the proprieter write up a sales order on 3-part carbon paper. I had to laugh though at his modern filing system - about 2 inches thick of business cards stuck into he well-worn golf shirt pocket.
My point to relay this? Part of the problem with downtown businesses is that while they are asking the Town to revitalize the core, but he is running a store that needs revitalization itself. I know it's a catch-22; business is down - can't renovate but you can't increase business until you renovate.
I firmly believe that we need to take an honest look at the downtown in light of where the new retail operations are in this town. I think the downtown should become an area for services. Other than a few remaining retail operations, most of the locations there are banks, dentists, lawyers, hair-dressers, etc. Let's make the downtown a service oriented location and leave the retail to the new normal in the east.
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