{"id":17667,"date":"2017-06-28T17:34:05","date_gmt":"2017-06-28T21:34:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=17667"},"modified":"2017-06-28T17:34:05","modified_gmt":"2017-06-28T21:34:05","slug":"library-square-set-for-fall-demolition-following-bridge-battle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/library-square-set-for-fall-demolition-following-bridge-battle\/","title":{"rendered":"Library Square set for fall demolition following Bridge battle"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

Community groups occupying the former Aurora Public Library and Seniors\u2019 Centre buildings on Victoria Street will have to vacate to make way for the wrecking ball by October 1.
\nCouncil, sitting at the Committee level last week, reaffirmed its decision to clear the buildings to make way for the demolition \u2013 and ultimate construction of Library Square \u2013 after a lengthy debate last week.
\nNear the start of talks, Council members heard a delegation from Olly Smolak of the Aurora Bridge Club who, on behalf of the group which currently calls the Old Library home, said they were at an impasse with Town Staff on finding a suitable new home that meets the needs of their large organization.
\nAs The Auroran reported last week, the Aurora Bridge Club was feeling the heat of the move.
\nThey estimate to accommodate their 932-strong membership at their busiest times they would need to lease a space of at least 2,000 square feet.
\nHowever, at this time, the best alternative the Town could open up was 800 square feet.
\n\u201cWhat we pay now in rent allows us to offer a reasonable price for people who are playing bridge,\u201d he said, noting that leasing a privately-owned space to meet their standards could cost up to $6,000 a month.
\nRaising member fees could give the Club $2,000 a month to work with, but no more.
\nWhile Council members said they sympathized, tasking staff to continue to work with the tenants, they largely agreed they had to continue moving forward.
\nSpeaking against the full-speed-ahead approach, however, were Councillors John Abel and Wendy Gaertner who said they objected to moving forward with the demolition plan for Library Square before designs were ready on what will ultimately replace the buildings.
\n\u201cTo do the demolition, you should have the design and funding all approved and in place,\u201d said Councillor Abel. \u201cTo demolish it just for the sake of demolishing it and then go through the process, it could be months or years before we get the final design and the funding all in order. It would make more sense to put the design and the funding in place and then say it is time to do the demolition.
\n\u201cWe are not doing anything right and we haven\u2019t done it from the very beginning. We should be thinking long-term and planning ahead. Why we are doing this to our community is beyond me. I can\u2019t support anything unless we put things in place. It would be like tearing down an arena and telling the kids you can\u2019t play hockey anymore, and we don\u2019t know if we\u2019re ever going to build one again, so go and play somewhere else.\u201d
\nOthers, however, disagree and said demolition is the necessary first step in creating something that will ultimately address the crunch for public spaces.
\n\u201cWe are challenged,\u201d said Councillor Michael Thompson. \u201cThe Town continues to grow and we don\u2019t have enough public community spaces and we don\u2019t have enough sports facilities. We continue to look this term at addressing all of those needs and art of the driver on library square has been the fact there is a plan to build a facility adjacent to the Church Street School to accommodate more public space. We as a group made a choice to move forward with the demolition of those facilities.\u201d
\nSimilar viewpoints were offered by Mayor Geoff Dawe and Councillor Paul Pirri who expressed a degree of frustration that what was once a nearly unanimous decision to proceed with demolition was now in question when confronted with needs of the Aurora Bridge Club \u2013 particularly when there are other community groups who use the facilities as well.
\n\u201cI have seen less flip-flopping at fishing tournaments than I have seen here tonight,\u201d said Councillor Pirri. \u201cCouncil unanimously decided to move forward with the demolition of those buildings. To claim now that we weren\u2019t in favour of demolishing those buildings is disingenuous. We need to move forward. There are solutions to be found. It is difficult when you\u2019re staring at the problems now but I have full faith in being able to come to something that works for all of the tenants.
\n\u201cWe\u2019re doing this to build more community space. To be paralyzed by a catch 22 and not make a decision because it is easier than moving forward, that is not what we\u2019re elected to do. We\u2019re elected to move forward, we\u2019re here to make decisions and sometimes the tough decisions are the right decisions and in the long run this is the long decision. Nobody says it won\u2019t have growing pains but we need to move forward so this situation doesn\u2019t happen with Councils in the future.\u201d<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Community groups occupying the former Aurora Public Library and Seniors\u2019 Centre buildings on Victoria Street will have to vacate to make way for the wrecking ball by October 1.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_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}},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17667","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\/p3D2k4-4AX","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-10 11:03:39","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\/17667","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=17667"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17667\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17667"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17667"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17667"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}