{"id":11233,"date":"2015-07-08T14:05:38","date_gmt":"2015-07-08T18:05:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=11233"},"modified":"2015-07-15T17:54:04","modified_gmt":"2015-07-15T21:54:04","slug":"talks-tried-to-prevent-magnas-departure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/talks-tried-to-prevent-magnas-departure\/","title":{"rendered":"Talks tried to prevent Magna’s departure"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n

Magna International took the first steps in taking their headquarters and consolidated operations to King Township last month, a multi-million dollar proposal that is expected to bring hundreds of jobs to Aurora\u2019s neighbouring municipality.<\/p>\n

It was a proposal that was, of course, warmly received by King Mayor Steve Pellegrini and members of King Council, but according to Aurora\u2019s municipal staff, it was a move that long-running behind-the-scenes talks at Town Hall tried to prevent. <\/p>\n

After The Auroran first reported Magna\u2019s pending departure from Aurora in May, Mayor Geoff Dawe said confirmation of the move had just arrived at Town Hall and conversations looking to the future would be welcome.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had some brief conversations with the folks at Magna a number of months ago and we talked about how they were starting to run out of room at their location,\u201d said Mayor Dawe at the time, noting the building on Wellington Street East was \u201cchallenging\u201d to operate.<\/p>\n

According to Anthony Ierullo, Aurora\u2019s Manager of Long Range and Strategic Planning, the Town was \u201cquite in the loop\u201d about Magna\u2019s intentions before the announcement was circulated.<\/p>\n

\u201cConversations with Magna have actually been going on long before the decision for them to leave was made public, so we were quite in the loop about these discussions through the Mayor\u2019s office for quite some time,\u201d said Mr. Ierulllo at Aurora\u2019s Economic Development Advisory Committee (EDAC) meeting. \u201cWe did do what we could [to prevent them from leaving], but the decision for Magna to locate where they have is a corporate one, not necessarily tied to anything the Town had direct control over.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe certainly tried, and the Mayor\u2019s Office was very active in trying to understand the rationale behind the move and trying to encourage them to stay. None of us would like to see a large employer like Magna leave under any circumstances.\u201d<\/p>\n

The comments came at a contentious meeting at EDAC where members demanded more answers on what the Town of Aurora is doing to encourage and foster the retention of large-scale employers like Magna. This was of particular concern to committee member – and former councillor \u2013 Don Constable, who worked with Magna and its founder, Frank Stronach, to bring the company to Aurora. <\/p>\n

Mr. Constable said it was \u201cmind blowing\u201d how Aurora could \u201callow Magna to just take off and go to King.\u201d While Councillors Paul Pirri and John Abel countered that there is very little one can do to stop a company from looking \u2013 and moving \u2013 elsewhere, Mr. Constable said if the Town was \u201cbetter connected\u201d with the business community they would have been aware of Magna\u2019s intentions before the lease on their Aurora headquarters was up in 2017.
\nBut, Magna\u2019s move is a done deal and from a municipal business perspective, the next conversations to take place should focus on the future of Magna\u2019s expansive corporate offices, which are currently owned by the real estate income trust Granite.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have reached out [to Granite] and we essentially have a three-year window to work with them on either a tenant or a plan with the building and we\u2019re going to be proactive on that,\u201d said Mr. Ierullo. \u201cWe have\u2026talked about our next steps [with the Mayor\u2019s Office] and we agreed that reaching out to Granite to discuss where that building goes moving forward and how we can assist with what their plans are. Ultimately it is their decision what they do with the building, [but it is a question of] how can we fit into that and advance that?\u201d<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Magna International took the first steps in taking their headquarters and consolidated operations to King Township last month, but…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11233","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-2Vb","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-25 11:56:49","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11233","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11233"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11233\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}