{"id":21265,"date":"2018-08-01T17:11:53","date_gmt":"2018-08-01T21:11:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=21265"},"modified":"2018-08-01T17:11:53","modified_gmt":"2018-08-01T21:11:53","slug":"hallmark-lands-go-to-baseball-in-council-u-turn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/hallmark-lands-go-to-baseball-in-council-u-turn\/","title":{"rendered":"Hallmark lands go to baseball in Council U-turn"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

Athletes will now get two baseball diamonds on the Hallmark Lands after Council made a U-turn last week on how the property should use.
\nEarlier this summer, Council struck what many local lawmakers said was a \u201ccompromise\u201d, deciding to build one multipurpose rectangular field and one senior baseball diamond after reaching an impasse on which sports group was in greater need of field hours.
\nEach sports group made their respective passionate pitches to Council, but Council decided to go down the middle of the road.
\nThis approach, however, hit a speedbump last week when a report from Sarah Tienkamp, Aurora\u2019s Manager of Parks and Fleet, said a multipurpose sports field would not fit on the land in the ideal direction if coupled with a diamond.
\nInstead, staff recommended the multipurpose field idea be scrapped and replaced with a natural turf soccer field, which could be oriented in the ideal north-south direction, a direction intended to keep the setting sun out of players\u2019 eyes and thus extend playing hours.
\nStaff\u2019s report raised many eyebrows around the table at the previous week\u2019s General Committee meeting, and this continued last Tuesday, with some Council members stating this information coming so late in the game was \u201ccircumventing\u201d their direction.
\n\u201cI have problems procedurally with how this has come back to us,\u201d said Councillor Tom Mrakas. \u201cI think this has been a way to circumvent the process and the decision made by the majority of Council. I am disappointed. I guess we will have to deal with this as we move forward in election season.\u201d
\nThese sentiments were echoed by Councillor Sandra Humfryes, who added: \u201cI am very disappointed with the report in general and how the information came to us in between reports. I wouldn\u2019t want to say this publicly\u2026but I am very disappointed. This is not the quality of work I want to see in the future.\u201d
\nCouncillor Harold Kim was on the same page, noting when Council voted to \u201ccompromise\u201d on the Hallmark lands with one field and one diamond, what they described as a \u201cone and one\u201d solution, that this decision was based on a certain set of information. Since that time, other pieces of the puzzle have come into play, including an extra $1.2 million needed to make a multipurpose field a reality.
\nWhile baseball ultimately won the day, soccer was not without its supporters.
\nBefore the final resolution was reached, Councillor Paul Pirri put forward a motion that would have accepted staff\u2019s recommendation for one baseball diamond and one natural turf soccer pitch.
\n\u201cI think we have debated this ad nauseum over the last month and a half or so,\u201d said Councillor Pirri.
\nBut, this ongoing debate was fine for Councillor Wendy Gaertner.
\n\u201cI think this is so very important to both the soccer groups and baseball, so if we have to speak about it on and on I think that is the right thing to do,\u201d she said.
\nWhen his motion failed, Councillor Pirri put two diamonds on the table.
\n\u201cIt would have been my preference for us to move forward with one and one\u2026[but rather than nothing getting built] I will be in favour of this,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

OPTIONS STILL AVAILABLE FOR MULTIPURPOSE FIELDS<\/strong><\/p>\n

Although Council voted 5 \u2013 3 on two baseball diamonds for the Hallmark lands (Councillor John Abel, an opponent of using the Hallmark Lands, previously designated as employment lands for any other purpose, was not at the meeting), their decision was influenced, in part, by assurances from Mayor Geoff Dawe and staff that there would be opportunities down the road to address the needs of local soccer clubs and other sports teams that would benefit from a multipurpose field.
\nAmong these opportunities, said Mayor Dawe, Provincially-held land on Bloomington Road near Cardinal Carter Catholic High School.
\nMayor Dawe told Council he and the Town have discussed the lands with Aurora\u2019s two MPPs, Christine Elliott and Michael Parsa, and there have been \u201csome indications there is a possibility of moving forward sooner rather than later on that.\u201d
\nShould that come to fruition, he said those lands would accommodate between three and five multipurpose fields.
\nThis was reiterated by Robin McDougall, Director of Community Services.
\n\u201cWe know that the lands for Magna are coming off our repertoire and we have to look at our future plan,\u201d she said. \u201cLooking at that long range accommodations and trying to accommodate soccer in a multipurpose facility that has multiple fields is an ideal scenario and Bloomington would serve as that opportunity.\u201d
\nThis was music to the ears of Councillor Harold Kim, who said the decision to move forward with two baseball diamonds did not mean that soccer would be left out of the mix.
\n\u201cNo one likes to wait, but there\u2019s something to be said in good things come to those who do,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019re only taking about another year. Baseball has been waiting a long time [for space], they have been suffering in terms of enrolment,\u201d he said. \u201cI think we made the right choice. It is unfortunate in terms of how it progressed, but I think Council made the right choice in the end.\u201d<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Athletes will now get two baseball diamonds on the Hallmark Lands after Council made a U-turn last week on how the property should use.<\/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_feature_clip_id":0,"_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-21265","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\/p3D2k4-5wZ","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-08-09 14:41:09","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\/21265","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=21265"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21265\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21265"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21265"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21265"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}