{"id":16724,"date":"2017-03-09T15:29:22","date_gmt":"2017-03-09T20:29:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=16724"},"modified":"2017-03-09T15:29:22","modified_gmt":"2017-03-09T20:29:22","slug":"we-have-disappointed-the-community-on-downtown-revitalization-councillor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/we-have-disappointed-the-community-on-downtown-revitalization-councillor\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cWe have disappointed the community\u201d on downtown revitalization: Councillor"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

Aurora has \u201cdisappointed the community\u201d on the revitalization of the downtown core and has to \u201cdo better,\u201d according to Councillor Wendy Gaertner.
\nThe majority of Council hopes that a shift to what is hoped to be a more cohesive plan will go a long way into seeing some results.
\nLast week, Council approved a motion from Councillor John Abel calling bringing together the multiple plans related to the downtown core \u2013 including the Aurora Promenade Plan, the Cultural Master Plan, Strategic Plan, and Community Tourism Plan \u2013 to develop a comprehensive \u201cDowntown Revitalization Plan through engagement, collaboration and communication.\u201d
\nFor many Council members it was an important step forward, but for nearly as many the motion was trying to re-invent the wheel. After a contentious debate, the motion was approved on a 5 \u2013 4 vote.
\n\u201cWithout a plan you can\u2019t obtain a vision. If we have a vision to revitalize it \u2013 and it is clear that we do \u2013 then we should go ahead with making a plan,\u201d said Councillor Abel. \u201cIn short, that is what I am bringing forward. There is a buy-in from our community partners. When we come up with an idea it is good to know how things fit in. A vision without an action is a daydream and an action without a vision is a nightmare. You don\u2019t want to be doing things and then realising that it was the wrong decision and you didn\u2019t have all the information and a plan in front of you.
\n\u201cWe need to incorporate all of these ideas if we\u2019re going to attract business, buy-in from your community and progress and move forward. We need to come forward with a downtown revitalization plan.\u201d
\nFrom the perspective of Councillor Wendy Gaertner, who was on Council when the Aurora Promenade Plan was approved, focusing on the Yonge and Wellington corridors, there were \u201ca lot of expectations\u201d when it came forward in 2010 \u2013 but little action.
\n\u201cI was going over my old, and some recent emails over the weekend and there is a lot of disappointment and we need to do something about it,\u201d she said. \u201cWe\u2019re talking about a whole six years. I don\u2019t know what the answer is, but we\u2019re going to have a new economic development person, we\u2019re going to have a Board. I definitely think downtown revitalization should be a priority and I think it should be a priority for the rest of our Council term.\u201d
\nA similar view was offered by Councillor Sandra Humfryes, who said Aurora has a number of good planning documents in place, each pulled together with community input, but they need to be brought together.
\n\u201cThis is pulling together those plans and articulating almost a roadmap of where do we want to go and where do we want to see things evolve,\u201d said Councillor Humfryes. \u201cI can see it be a plan over the years, but we can see it evolve and it takes a while to bring these plans to fruition.\u201d
\nAdded Councillor Jeff Thom: \u201cI see this as a direction to staff to look at what we have already and try to get this stuff going and putting an exclamation point behind this Council\u2019s desire to declare that this is a big priority for us. I don\u2019t see it as being redundant necessarily or ordering staff on a wild goose hunt. I think we can work with what we have already and this puts that exclamation point behind it.\u201d
\nOthers, however, said they believed the motion did indeed send staff on a wild goose chase or, in short, was simply \u201credundant.\u201d
\n\u201cI see this as repackaging what we have been discussing for six years and has been said many, many times, be it the Promenade Plan or other plans that have been identified,\u201d said Councillor Michael Thompson. \u201cThey all speak to downtown revitalization. Staff have confirmed through our discussions that they do have a plan for downtown revitalization already and it is those reports, studies and reports that we have approved before.
\n\u201cAs we can all agree on, the challenge is with the implementation. We haven\u2019t done a great job of following through on all those different action items. That\u2019s the real challenge as opposed to having some sort of glossy document called the Downtown Revitalization plan that just repackages what we already have. The question is have we done a good job of implementing those policies and procedures that we have in place? The answer is no. That\u2019s where the focus should be, rather than repackaging what we already have.\u201d
\nCouncillor Tom Mrakas was of a similar mindset, saying \u201ceveryone likes to use the buzzword \u2018revitalization.\u2019\u201d
\n\u201cOur Promenade Plan is, in essence, a revitalization plan for the downtown,\u201d he said. \u201cThe difference is we haven\u2019t delivered on that plan and that is what we need to do. We don\u2019t need to create another plan that we already have. We need to deliver and use what we already have and make some decisions. That is the path we started to take and we started to move. The Cultural Precinct was born from the promenade plan. The Promenade Plan speaks to that revitalization and renewal of the Downtown. That\u2019s what we need to do, not create another plan.\u201d
\nAdded Councillor Paul Pirri: \u201cWorking in the field, I understand completely the value of having a Downtown Revitalization Plan. There is nothing Councillor Abel has mentioned tonight that is not already contained in one of our plans. It would be easy to ask why he wants to bring forward a motion that repeats something that has already been done. I am not going to do that.
\n\u201cAre we endorsing his plan, or are we endorsing what we already have and what we\u2019re already doing? It irritates me we are working towards a goal together and we have a rogue Councillor saying there is no vision other than their vision. I take serious offence to being told that all of our work, all last term of Council\u2019s work, is not downtown revitalization but Councillor Abel is going to bring forward this new plan. I think we need to take stock of what we have already done and move forward.\u201d
\nVoting in favour were Mayor Geoff Dawe, Councillors Abel, Gaertner, Humfryes and Thom. Voting against were Councillors Harold Kim, Mrakas, Pirri, and Thompson.<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Aurora has \u201cdisappointed the community\u201d on the revitalization of the downtown core and has to \u201cdo better,\u201d according to Councillor Wendy Gaertner.
\nThe majority of Council hopes that a shift to what is hoped to be a more cohesive plan will go a long way into seeing some results. <\/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-16724","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\/p3D2k4-4lK","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-24 13:23:19","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\/16724","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=16724"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16724\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16724"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16724"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16724"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}