{"id":20670,"date":"2018-05-16T14:51:04","date_gmt":"2018-05-16T18:51:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=20670"},"modified":"2018-05-16T14:51:04","modified_gmt":"2018-05-16T18:51:04","slug":"inside-aurora-the-jewel-in-the-crown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/inside-aurora-the-jewel-in-the-crown\/","title":{"rendered":"INSIDE AURORA: The Jewel in the Crown"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Scott Johnston<\/strong><\/p>\n

Petch House is in the news again.
\nIt\u2019s certainly had an interesting history.
\nIt was apparently built by a one-legged sailor from Yorkshire, and it\u2019s one of the oldest buildings in the area.
\nOver the years it\u2019s been home to both founding members of the community (through the 1800s), and a variety of Aurora\u2019s wildlife. The latter occupants were primarily through the early 2000s when the building was moved from its original site to a temporary location on Leslie.
\nWhile the critters flourished for ten years amongst the slowly decaying structure, debates raged on about what to do with it.
\nShould it be preserved? Where would it be moved to? What would it be used for?
\nAfter much discussion, the first two of those questions were answered. The house was preserved, and it was set up near the Seniors\u2019 Centre.
\nThis second move elevated Petch House\u2019s status from not only being one of the oldest buildings in the area, but also one of the most well-travelled.
\nThe final result did not come easily. It took a lot of hours of planning, a lot of physical labour, and a lot of money – almost $120,000 – to get it to that stage.
\nBut in the end the building looked great. Maybe not quite like the original version, but a close facsimile. Some described it as the new jewel in Aurora\u2019s crown.
\nThe only thing not sorted out was the answer to the question of what purpose it would serve.
\nVarious ideas were floated; wedding venue, tourist information centre, tea room, daycare, and Sports Hall of Fame, amongst others. Implementation of any of these was hampered at the time by the unfortunate lack of plumbing, electricity, flooring and proper climate control.
\nI guess these were considered out-of-budget extras, and shows that Aurora was well versed in not including everything in project budgets well before the more recent example of the Joint Operations Centre.
\nFour years later, Petch House still looks good, but continues to suffer from a lack of users, not to mention plumbing and other infrastructure, so a whole new bunch of ideas have come forward on what to do with it. Actually, they\u2019re all pretty much the same old ideas as last time, but at least they\u2019re in the spotlight again.
\nOne that\u2019s being seriously considered that caught my attention is to use it as a storage building.
\nThat\u2019s right; the Town will have invested hundreds of hours of debate and study over almost 15 years, not to mention $120,000, to turn a 170-year-old building into a glorified shed, something that one could order in the same size from a home renovation store for less than a tenth of what the Town has poured so far in the original.
\nCouncil has asked staff to provide yet more reports detailing what additional funding it might take to retrofit Petch House to be a wedding venue, or something more than just a roof over the Town\u2019s out of season Christmas decorations, or whatever storage we apparently desperately need.
\nI\u2019m not excited about spending even more money on this structure, but we\u2019ve come this far, so if it\u2019s within reason, we owe it to our Town\u2019s history, and all those who have put so much into this project, to invest a bit more to make this building live up to its potential.
\nBetter that Petch House be the jewel in Aurora\u2019s crown, not the box the crown is stored in.<\/p>\n

Feel free to e-mail Scott at: machellscorners@gmail.com<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Scott Johnston Petch House is in the news again. It\u2019s certainly had an interesting history. It was apparently built by a one-legged sailor from Yorkshire, and it\u2019s one of the oldest buildings in the area. Over the years it\u2019s been home to both founding members of the community (through the 1800s), and a variety […]<\/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":[29,28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20670","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-columns","category-opinion"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-5no","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-16 13:18:27","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\/20670","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=20670"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20670\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20670"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20670"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20670"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}