{"id":20052,"date":"2018-03-10T09:58:52","date_gmt":"2018-03-10T14:58:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=20052"},"modified":"2018-03-10T09:58:52","modified_gmt":"2018-03-10T14:58:52","slug":"business-impacts-need-to-be-looked-at-during-road-reconstructions-council","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/business-impacts-need-to-be-looked-at-during-road-reconstructions-council\/","title":{"rendered":"Business impacts need to be looked at during road reconstructions: Council"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

2017 should have been a year of \u201cgreat promise and greater achievement\u201d for his Yonge Street business. Instead, thanks to some long-delayed road reconstruction, 2017 was \u201ca year of disappointment\u201d for Dennis Hirst.
\nHirst owns the Yonge Street Winery, a D-I-Y wine operation at the northwest corner of Yonge and Brookland Avenue.
\nNestled in a plaza across from the LCBO, his location was at the epicentre of the extensive and protracted reconstruction of Brookland, a process which left business owners hurting and infuriated, he said.
\n\u201cOur experiences during the months of October, November and December with the construction workers was nothing short of infuriating,\u201d said Mr. Hirst, appearing at Council last week to support a motion from Councillor Harold Kim which will look at lessons learned during this project that will help ease the process in future for business owners.
\n\u201cThis motion is progressive and long overdue,\u201d said Mr. Hirst, giving kudos to not only Councillor Kim for his support in finding a resolution, but also Councillors Tom Mrakas and Michael Thompson.
\n\u201cYour genuine concern over the wellbeing of our businesses in our plaza and the safety of residents living on Brookland Avenue has really returned my faith in people, and municipal politics in Aurora is in very good hands. However, three months later, Brookland Avenue construction is not yet complete. There is more finishing work to be done in 2018, although the most stressful part of the project appears to be nearly over.
\n\u201cHow did we fare as a business? Let\u2019s just say what should have been a year of great promise and greater achievement became a year of disappointment. Here we are, it\u2019s 2018, and despite the new challenges that every local business faces this year, road construction in Aurora doesn\u2019t have to be one of them. Let\u2019s learn from our history and together let\u2019s try not to repeat the mistakes of the past.\u201d
\nCommunication between the Town and local business owners was one of the most significant breakdowns, he said, and a process which Councillor Kim aimed to help in his motion, which was ultimately passed by Council.
\nThrough the motion, Councillor Kim called on staff to come back with a report on challenges encountered by residents and business owners in the Brookland area throughout the road project, successes, what was learned through the process, a path forward in engaging business owners, and recommendations that should be included in future road projects.
\n\u201cThe motion is designed to ask staff, as we do in a lot of the projects, to have a look back, review what was done right, review what was not done, what could have been done better, and come back with a report of what a more efficient process would look like with regards to communicating with the business owners,\u201d said Councillor Kim.
\nSome of the issues business owners were facing in this situation \u2013 including challenges accessing their businesses and ensuring potential customers knew they remained open during the process \u2013 were not being adequately monitored.
\n\u201c[Open signs] can be easily camouflaged amongst the other construction signs,\u201d said Councillor Kim. \u201cUnlike the LCBO, its revenues probably didn\u2019t really decline because people would probably climb over steep hills to get their alcohol, but for Wimpy\u2019s, the variety stores, it is more of a challenge and people choose to go somewhere further away. [This report] I think is something that is much needed.\u201d
\nCouncil members agreed, stating that while the report might be much needed, so too is action.
\n\u201cIt would be my expectation from an organizational perspective [that] we always have a process of continuous improvement and we\u2019re always evaluating things and learning from it and trying to get better,\u201d said Councillor Michael Thompson. \u201cI don\u2019t want anyone to see this motion and think we don\u2019t do this already, but this might be a more broad perspective.\u201d
\nWith this motion, however, Councillor Wendy Gaertner cautioned it is important to consider the needs of nearby residents as well.
\n\u201cThe weather was instrumental in causing problems, and it was the residents in the apartment building and the manager I was in communication with,\u201d she said. \u201cTo me, there was a serious lack of communication between our staff and the manager and, therefore, the manager and the residents. I think we need to look at that. There were cars that got stuck in the mud on the road. I think on one occasion the resident was so mad they actually got the construction crew to push them out and another had it towed. People had to walk and they really couldn\u2019t \u2013 it was impossible there was so much mud. We just need to take into consideration how it is going to affect the residents on the ground better.\u201d
\nFrom Mayor Geoff Dawe\u2019s perspective, there was already a lesson learned \u2013 that maybe sometimes the lowest bidder on any project isn\u2019t always the best option.
\n\u201cWe can always improve what we do, but it should be pointed out that with the number of projects we do, we have relatively few bad ones,\u201d he said. \u201cThis is one of them, but there are relatively few. I think we sometimes put ourselves in peril by picking the least expensive, as opposed to the most qualified. I would like to look at that as well, and maybe that is something the Finance Advisory Committee can look at as well.\u201d<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

2017 should have been a year of \u201cgreat promise and greater achievement\u201d for his Yonge Street business. Instead, thanks to some long-delayed road reconstruction, 2017 was \u201ca year of disappointment\u201d for Dennis Hirst.<\/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-20052","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\/p3D2k4-5dq","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-20 17:42:03","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\/20052","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=20052"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20052\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20052"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20052"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20052"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}