{"id":16540,"date":"2017-02-15T17:40:35","date_gmt":"2017-02-15T22:40:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=16540"},"modified":"2017-02-17T12:15:02","modified_gmt":"2017-02-17T17:15:02","slug":"revitalization-business-growth-part-of-mayors-2017-vision","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/revitalization-business-growth-part-of-mayors-2017-vision\/","title":{"rendered":"Revitalization, business growth part of Mayor’s 2017 vision"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

So, they stole a bit of his thunder.
\nWhen Geoff Dawe prepares each year to stand before members of the Aurora Chamber of Commerce for the annual Mayor\u2019s Luncheon, he usually has a few big business announcements up his sleeve to wow the crowds. This year, however, the cat got let out of the bag a bit early with the announcement Microtel Inn & Suites plans to build their flagship hotel at Eric T Smith Way and Goulding Avenue near Leslie and Wellington Streets.
\n\u201c[Area businesses] are obviously very happy it is going forward,\u201d Mayor Dawe told The Auroran ahead of his Chamber speech. \u201cI am quite surprised at the number of people who have commented to me since the hotel was announced [impressed] that we\u2019re getting a hotel. Obviously a lot of people were watching for it.\u201d
\nMayor Dawe says the process of securing a hotel has been ongoing since 2012 and it has taken a while for all the pieces to fit together. The most important of these jigsaw pieces was addressing previously exorbitant Development Charges levied on hotel developments by the Region of York.
\nRecently, the Region passed a new DC bylaw for hotels bringing the price for square foot down from $40.31 to $7.95.
\n\u201cFor this development going in, it represents a little over $1.5 million in terms of costs they will not incur,\u201d says Mayor Dawe.
\nLooking ahead to this week\u2019s Chamber speech, Mayor Dawe says he was struck by the increase of employment in York Region, which had seen an increase of 15,000 jobs by the middle of 2016. A contributing factor in this, he says, is land being less expensive for businesses in York Region.
\nIt\u2019s a competitive market, he says, noting he believes this is also augmented by a frustration some commuters are feeling travelling into the city for work every day.
\nCiting Aurora\u2019s high ranking in the annual Moneysense survey of Canada\u2019s best communities to live, Mayor Dawe says one of the biggest challenges in maintaining Aurora\u2019s current ranking is housing prices.
\n\u201cI just had an email from a developer the other day saying, \u2018Can you get us more land?\u2019\u201d he recalls. \u201cPeople want to work here. Aurora is still a very attractive community. We have managed to retain an extremely good balance of open space to developed space, and we\u2019re still in the 40 per cent open range. We\u2019re increasing our trail content and there have been some really good developments there in terms of how many additional kilometres of trails we will be adding over the next few years, especially the east-west trail through the former Highland Gate golf course, which will be off-road.\u201d
\nMaintaining that balance as Aurora reaches build-out will be a \u201chuge challenge\u201d, he admits, but one which will be addressed through the development of Aurora\u2019s new Official Plan.
\nAnother huge challenge will be maintaining \u2013 and drawing in \u2013 businesses to certain areas in Town. While Mayor Dawe says \u201cPeople want to work here,\u201d getting those employment opportunities \u2013 businesses \u2013 in Aurora\u2019s Downtown Core is a challenge which proves perennial.
\nThe development of the Town\u2019s Cultural Precinct Plan will hopefully make that challenge a little less onerous.
\nNevertheless, calling it the \u201cCultural Precinct Plan\u201d is \u201calmost a misnomer\u201d as it is all about the revitalization of Yonge Street, the historic Downtown Core, and making the area generally a more attractive destination. Movement towards a solution is now inevitable following Council\u2019s decision to raze the former homes of the Aurora Public Library and Seniors\u2019 Centre on Victoria Street to make way for something new.
\n\u201cI think by at least putting our stake in the ground [by making a decision] to tear those buildings down, then I think we have a clean slate,\u201d says Mayor Dawe. \u201cI think we\u2019re getting over the hump. We have pushed the rock up the hill for quite a long time and I think we\u2019re over the top. There may be people who wish to go too quickly following that rock down the hill, but we have some reflective time in the process. We\u2019re still actively engaging the community and actively engaging the businesses in the area to see how it all fits together.\u201d
\nThere are many options on what could possibly be put in Library Square. Mayor Dawe cites the recent redevelopment of Newmarket\u2019s Old Town Hall as something that might be a good fit for the space. A theatre with tiered seating, or even an outdoor amphitheatre, would be a feature complementing existing amenities in the area.
\nWhen Mayor Dawe addressed the Chamber last year, he was keen on moving forward with his so-called \u201cYonge Street Parking Plan\u201d which would reduce Yonge Street to one lane of traffic in each direction in the historic core to allow for increased on-street parking.
\nAlthough that idea fizzled at the Council table, he has not yet given up hope.
\n\u201cI am still very interested in that and I think it needs to be restructured,\u201d he says. \u201cI had a long conversation with Ron Palmer, one of the principals of the Planning Partnership, and he is very keen on the whole concept of parkettes [for businesses to put out a couple of chairs for customers to relax] and things like that; how do you change that space to make it more liveable?
\n\u201cThat was my goal. It wasn\u2019t articulated well, to be frank. His comment was you have a perceived parking problem, but you don\u2019t have a real parking problem. [The perception is] if I can\u2019t park in front of Caruso\u2019s then there is no parking there. But, you will park at the mall and walk much further. I don\u2019t know how you change that perception [that there\u2019s parking there behind Aw, Shucks or on the east side. The plan] was too focused on creating it as a parking lane as opposed to a parkette lane.\u201d<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So, they stole a bit of his thunder.
\nWhen Geoff Dawe prepares each year to stand before members of the Aurora Chamber of Commerce for the annual Mayor\u2019s Luncheon, he usually has a few big …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":16541,"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_feature_clip_id":0,"_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-16540","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/2017-02-16-12.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-4iM","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-08-14 12:54:57","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\/16540","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=16540"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16540\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16541"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16540"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16540"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16540"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}