{"id":20697,"date":"2018-05-23T17:49:11","date_gmt":"2018-05-23T21:49:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=20697"},"modified":"2018-05-31T09:39:24","modified_gmt":"2018-05-31T13:39:24","slug":"hallmark-land-decision-sparks-debate-on-community-needs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/hallmark-land-decision-sparks-debate-on-community-needs\/","title":{"rendered":"Hallmark land decision sparks debate on community needs"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

The push to convert 12 acres of Industrial Parkway South lands into fields to address Aurora\u2019s mounting sports needs has sparked accusations of electioneering around the Council table.
\nCouncil this week is expected to approve the design and tendering of building two baseball diamonds on the Hallmark lands, a plot of land purchased by the Town at Industrial Parkway South and Vandorf Road in 2015 for municipal purposes.
\nThe design of the diamonds, to the tune of $3 million, was approved at the Committee level last week, but not before a delegation from former councillor John Gallo who said this $3 million build would be a misuse of tax dollars.
\n\u201cYou purchased a property in 2015 for $7.4 million,\u201d said Mr. Gallo. \u201cIt is 13 acres, the current value based on recent sales in Aurora is between 1.8 and 2 million per acre, which gives us approximately $25 million. The zoning is being converted from employment lands to recreational, which will eliminate any property tax levy in perpetuity. That is not a small claim. Converting employment lands to anything is a serious thing in this Town and we have been told that time and time again. Property taxes generated on that property, if it were fully built out, would be in excess of $1 million a year.
\n\u201cYour proposal to spend $3 million on two baseball diamonds with a value of $25 million plus $3 million is $28 million for two diamonds. That is $14 million per diamond. It is my view that the cost to build the Stewart Burnett Baseball Diamond in 2009 was around $1 million, excluding the land.To summarize, you have an asset worth $25 million. Should we decide to build the baseball diamonds, it is a $25 million investment and a loss of property taxes forever.\u201d
\nMr. Gallo went on to suggest the Town sell the Hallmark lands, take the proceeds and invest in repurposing current recreational assets to address the growing needs of baseball and soccer within the community, including adding baseball diamonds to Machell Park, across the street from the Aurora Community Centre.
\nThis was a position adopted by Councillor John Abel following the delegation.
\n\u201cI am looking at fiscal responsibility. If I am going to construct a ball diamond, I am going to do it in the most responsible way,\u201d said Councillor Abel. \u201cWe have to look at the whole picture here. If you tell me I am going to build a ball diamond for $4.5 million, that is not responsible. You have to look at little harder and do a little better than that. Yes, we looked at the Hallmark lands and I think we had our eye on the building and looking at leveraging that into a multi-sport facility.
\n\u201cWe have to think long-term for our community. We can\u2019t be giving away employment land. We have to guard and make that available for the long-term sustainability for our community. If we have an opportunity to move that land and sell it, [with the money we gain] we can build our multisport facility with that.\u201d
\nThe Councillor said it would be a better use of funds to construct two further baseball diamonds at Machell Park.
\nThe problem, however, as pointed out by Councillor Jeff Thom, is going into last week\u2019s General Committee meeting, building sports fields on the Hallmark lands was one of the top pledges made by Councillor Abel on the website touting his mayoral bid.
\n\u201cI will provide sports facilities\/fields at Hallmark Lands at GW Williams and the new Bayview High School to be built,\u201d said the website on Tuesday evening before the passage was removed on Wednesday morning.
\n\u201cI am just simply mentioning your position has changed, it\u2019s public,\u201d said Councillor Jeff Thom.
\nMeanwhile, Councillor Wendy Gaertner added, \u201cThis is sounding a lot like election-speak.\u201d
\n\u201cI never thought of buying this land in terms of taxes and tax laws, but at the end of the day\u2026we have to look at community benefit and we have been looking at a piece of land for so long and there is nothing,\u201d she continued. \u201cWho knows, we might get lucky and find another piece of land somewhere \u2013 people have mentioned Bloomington \u2013 but we have other needs. Soccer has needs, we have all other kinds of needs. We need all the land we can get.\u201d
\nThis echoed a view shared by most members of Council, who argued the Town is not in the business of flipping land and that there are acute needs of sports groups that need to be addressed.
\n\u201cGoing in, when we chose to purchase, it was always going to be purchased for recreational,\u201d said Councillor Michael Thompson. \u201cThis change from industrial to recreational was known when we purchased the land and Council made that decision \u2013 no different than when we acquired other pieces of land last term. We decided to purchase Mavrinac and, again, we did that for municipal purposes for the community benefit. The decision at that time was, no, we weren\u2019t going to flip the land and make a profit on it, we were buying that land for a goal and a purpose and it was for the community benefit. Yes, we could turn around and flip this land.
\n\u201cThere is a possibility to make a profit, but that is not why we\u2019re here. We\u2019re here to address the needs of the community and that is why we buy those lands.We\u2019re not looking to purchase and flip those lands; we\u2019re looking to purchase those lands to address the shortfalls and needs of the community, especially our sports and rec. I have a hard time putting that into the equation about what the cost of it is because\u2026 regardless of whether it is going to be baseball fields or soccer fields, whatever it is, we were buying it for that purpose and if you want to do that kind of math, I don\u2019t think that is really genuine.\u201d
\nAdded Councillor Tom Mrakas: \u201cI wouldn\u2019t be in favour of [Machell Park] because I wouldn\u2019t want to take away from one organization and give to another. I don\u2019t think that makes sense. As far as selling the lands, if we sell these lands, yes, we would make a profit at this point but we would have to buy lands and the price has gone up to buy lands. We realistically wouldn\u2019t be making a profit; we would actually be losing a valuable piece of land that we could actually convert into sports fields and provide more services for our residents.\u201d
\nMayor Geoff Dawe echoed Councillor Thompson\u2019s sentiments, bringing the minds of Council back to the fight to secure lands on Mavrinac Boulevard for what is now Thomas Coates Park.
\n\u201cIf we were in the business of buying and selling, which I don\u2019t believe is the business a municipality should be in, we should have flipped Mavrinac,\u201d said Mayor Dawe. \u201cWe could have tripled our money, a developer would have bought it, they could have put all sorts of houses on there, and we would have made tax dollars that way. The Council of the day elected to make a park there, so obviously we have precedent for buying land and turning it into recreational property.\u201d<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Council split on whether to build two baseball diamonds on land, a baseball diamond and soccer pitch — or to flip the land for a profit and use the money elsewhere.<\/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-20697","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\/p3D2k4-5nP","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-16 12:08:32","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\/20697","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=20697"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20697\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20697"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20697"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20697"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}