{"id":20661,"date":"2018-05-16T14:47:53","date_gmt":"2018-05-16T18:47:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=20661"},"modified":"2018-05-16T14:47:53","modified_gmt":"2018-05-16T18:47:53","slug":"brookland-reconstruction-resulted-in-hit-to-businesses-environment-councillors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/brookland-reconstruction-resulted-in-hit-to-businesses-environment-councillors\/","title":{"rendered":"Brookland reconstruction resulted in hit to businesses, environment: Councillors"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

The reconstruction of Brookland Avenue has been branded as a \u201chorror story\u201d by one Councillor, but the Town should step up to make a gesture to local businesses \u2013 and give a helping hand to environmental damage, according to Councillors.
\nMore concerns with the lingering impact of the controversial road reconstruction project on Brookland Avenue were aired around the Council table this week, this time with local lawmakers focused on the negative impacts the prolonged construction had on local business, as well as the negative impacts it had on the local environment.
\n\u201cThere was a lot of inconvenience caused to local residents and businesses,\u201d said Councillor Wendy Gaertner, reiterating some of the issues she raised at the previous week\u2019s General Committee meeting.
\nShe asked whether or not it would be appropriate to put something out through the Town\u2019s various communications channels that they \u201cregret the inconvenience\u201d the construction had on local shops.
\nAt the time of the construction, Aurora encouraged patrons to visit local businesses through those same channels, said Stephanie Mackenzie-Smith, Manager of Corporate Communications for the Town of Aurora, letting patrons know that the entrances to the local plaza and LCBO were not impacted by the road construction.
\nNevertheless, Councillor Gaertner said more should be done.
\n\u201cI would like to acknowledge the businesses we might have effected,\u201d she said.
\nThese concerns were shared by Councillor John Abel, but his issues were more focused on the environmental damage wrought by the construction., including the \u201cremoval of vegetation along culverts\u201d and how that might have impacted area run-off.
\n\u201cWe do try our best to mitigate any removal of vegetation, but I believe [the Director] explained that they had to address the slope and, therefore, it required the removal of vegetation,\u201d said Councillor Abel. \u201cThere are a lot of things we could learn from this going forward, and not all projects are of the same scope and easy. This is, in my two terms, one that is at the extreme of how things cannot add up and it just seems to accumulate in a long project that we don\u2019t normally see.
\n\u201cI appreciate some of the communication and management comments that were gleaned from this situation and hopefully weather cooperates, and challenges on culverts are understood and we\u2019re able to meet the challenges of dealing with it.\u201d
\nCouncillor Gaertner, on the other hand, was less conciliatory about the matter.
\n\u201cWe need to bring this down to a level of reality for everybody,\u201d she continued. \u201cWhat we actually did was destroy habitat of squirrels and skunks, and we took down trees with hollows that were resting places. But those places to nest and live are becoming more and more rare. I don\u2019t think that this had to happen, but we are going forward.
\n\u201cTo bring it down even to a closer level, a friend of mine lives on the fourth or fifth floor of that apartment building and she actually had a squirrel make a nest in the bag of earth that she left out over the winter because there was no other place. That is a pretty dire consequence to have a squirrel climb up to a four or fifth floor balcony, find a bag of earth and make a nest. Going forward, we really do need to take more care with our natural environment.\u201d
\nAccording to Marco Ramunno, Aurora\u2019s Director of Planning, design drawings for the Brookland project identified, through an arbourist\u2019s report, a number of trees and plots of vegetation that had to be removed as part of the culvert placement. There is, he stressed, a replanting program in place and that replanting will take place sometime this spring or in the early summer.
\nAt the end of the day, however, Councillor Tom Mrakas said the primary consideration has to be the business impact.
\n\u201cWe have talked about this one a lot and there has been a lot of issues, but the thing that we need to be mindful of, and what I think is most important to us, is the disruption to our businesses and to our residents,\u201d said Councillor Mrakas. \u201cI think that is what we have asked our staff to look at moving forward and to be proactive and minimize that disruption. I think our CAO has heard us loud and clear and I think when we looked at this specific project there [were] some communications problems between departments and we have been assured that has been taken care of.
\n\u201cMoving forward, we\u2019re going to make sure that doesn\u2019t happen. I think there are a lot of things that have been identified that we could have been proactive, regardless of the weather. We all now the weather is unpredictable and it can cause delays, but if we put the proper measures in place, I think we can do a better job to minimize that disruption to our residents and businesses.\u201d<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The reconstruction of Brookland Avenue has been branded as a \u201chorror story\u201d by one Councillor, but the Town should step up to make a gesture to local businesses \u2013 and give a helping hand to environmental damage, according to Councillors.<\/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-20661","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\/p3D2k4-5nf","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-23 10:03:14","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\/20661","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=20661"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20661\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20661"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20661"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20661"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}