{"id":20911,"date":"2018-06-14T00:01:52","date_gmt":"2018-06-14T04:01:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=20911"},"modified":"2018-06-14T00:01:52","modified_gmt":"2018-06-14T04:01:52","slug":"4-9-million-armoury-renovation-set-for-council-approval","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/4-9-million-armoury-renovation-set-for-council-approval\/","title":{"rendered":"$4.9 million Armoury renovation set for Council approval"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

A $4.9 million plan to complete the transformation of the historic Aurora Armoury into a new campus for Niagara College\u2019s Canadian Food & Wine Institute, plus community space, is set to receive the go-ahead from Council this week.
\nSitting at the Committee level last Tuesday, Council members gave the green light to increasing the renovation\u2019s budget to $4,883,800, money which will come out of Aurora\u2019s Hydro Reserves, money garnered from the sale of Aurora Hydro and earmarked to build or grow community assets.
\nOnce ratified by Council this week, designs for the revamp will be approved, and these entail a 32 seat classroom and meeting space on the north side of the building, located at the northeast corner of Town Park, a 250 person multipurpose space in the centre of the building, a 12 seat kitchen and demonstration area at the south side of the building, and opening up the west side of the Armoury into Town Park.
\nThe decision to move forward was approved by the majority of Council. While Councillor Harold Kim was not in attendance to cast his vote, Councillor John Abel, a long-time opponent of the Town\u2019s lease agreement with Niagara College, reiterated his position.
\n\u201cI am standing for the taxpayers because it is their money we\u2019re using on this,\u201d said Councillor Abel. \u201cHaving a culinary school is a good idea, but I think we\u2019re subjecting the taxpayer to an excessive amount of the subsidy. We\u2019re paying the full shot. Niagara College is committing service in kind of $500,000\u2026but they are not contributing a cent to the capital investment here. It is being fully subsidized by us and we\u2019re investing to their benefit. Clearly, this is not a wise use of our taxpayer money.\u201d
\nCountering this position was Mayor Geoff Dawe, who took aim at Councillor Abel\u2019s argument that this was about taxpayer money.
\n\u201cThis is coming from the Hydro Reserves [which was] garnered by selling a significant Town asset to PowerStream,\u201d said Mayor Dawe. \u201cI have always been of the opinion that the money from the Hydro Fund should be invested back into something that returns a substantial asset to the Town of Aurora because we all benefit from that. I firmly believe this is one of those projects and I believe the benefits are fabulous.\u201d
\nCouncillor Wendy Gaertner was of a similar view to Mayor Dawe, adding she thought it is a \u201cwise use of money\u201d while Councillor Tom Mrakas said while his colleague criticized the \u201csubsidy,\u201d the Town has to spend money to renovate and update the nearly-150-year-old building anyway.
\n\u201cAt the end of the day we\u2019re going to have to [renovate] regardless of who is in there, whether it is a user group, community partners\u2026we\u2019re going to have to pay this bill to renovate and that is the idea,\u201d he said. I remember being with Councillor Abel at the beginning of this term and we walked through there and said we would love to see doors that fold open and open to the park, we would love to see a fully equipped kitchen, washroom, and when I look at this drawing it is exactly what the two of us had discussions about. We are building what we had vision to build there. The only difference is we\u2019ve decided we\u2019re going to lease it to someone and bring it in.
\n\u201cWhile there might be some subsidies at the beginning, [Niagara College is] paying a pretty hefty bill and I don\u2019t think there is any user group out there that is willing to pay that bill right now.\u201d
\nCouncillor Mrakas also argued in favour of what he and many of his colleagues have said will be the economic benefits Niagara College and the Canadian Food & Wine Institute will bring to Aurora. These benefits, he said, only help the revitalization of Aurora\u2019s downtown core and aid local businesses.
\n\u201cI am certainly supportive of the motion before us,\u201d added Councillor Michael Thompson. \u201cI do agree this project is in the best interests of the Town. It has been debated numerous times. We have all stated our positions [of why] we feel it is in the best interests of the Town.\u201d
\nCouncillor Abel, on the other hand, remained unconvinced.
\nHe, along with Councillors Gaertner, Thompson and Paul Pirri, raised questions on a number of the design elements, from the durability of various roofing options to the level of accessibility in planned new washrooms, but, at the end of the day, the idea was a non-starter, he said.
\n\u201cI did share a great vision with Councillor Mrakas when we first came on term,\u201d Councillor Abel contended. \u201cWhen we walked through the Armoury, we thought, \u2018What a great acquisition we have here for our community.\u2019 That community space has been eliminated, so that wasn\u2019t part of our vision. We\u2019re investing in a third party, and good for them. If we had gone to 17 other culinary schools that exist, we might have been able to get a better package than what we did. We never had that opportunity, nor did we ever do that. That is called looking out for the best interests of your taxpayer.\u201d<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A $4.9 million plan to complete the transformation of the historic Aurora Armoury into a new campus for Niagara College\u2019s Canadian Food & Wine Institute, plus community space, is set to receive the go-ahead from Council this week.<\/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-20911","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\/p3D2k4-5rh","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-06 01:56:42","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\/20911","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=20911"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20911\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20911"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20911"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20911"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}