{"id":26957,"date":"2020-07-09T22:08:55","date_gmt":"2020-07-10T02:08:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=26957"},"modified":"2020-07-09T22:09:00","modified_gmt":"2020-07-10T02:09:00","slug":"council-renews-vision-to-turn-hallmark-lands-into-baseball-hub","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/council-renews-vision-to-turn-hallmark-lands-into-baseball-hub\/","title":{"rendered":"Council renews vision to turn Hallmark lands into baseball hub"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Council has formally renewed its vision to turn the\nHallmark lands into a hub for community baseball.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On a vote of 5 \u2013 2 last month, Council voted to nix a\nproposed indoor baseball training facility for the land in favour of their\noriginal vision of two full-size baseball diamonds to address Town-wide diamond\nshortages being weathered by local baseball teams and organizations, including\nthe Aurora King Baseball Association (AKBA).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Work on the two baseball diamonds was originally slated\nto begin this year after considerable Council debate on whether the land,\nsecured by the 2014 \u2013 2018 Council to address field shortages, would be best\nused for two soccer fields, two baseball diamonds, or one of each. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A late in the game pitch from baseball proponents on a\npublic-private partnership for a baseball dome, however, caused a re-think of\nthese plans, but after staff deemed resulting proposals unfavourable to the\nTown and heard from user groups that such a facility wouldn\u2019t help them get in\nmore diamond time, lawmakers were back where they started.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The matter was revisited at the June 16 General Committee\n(GC) meeting where the majority of Council voted to wipe the slate clean and go\nback to the original plan for two diamonds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhile I would still like to see multi-purpose, while I\nstill think the more value you provide to the majority of our residents the\nbetter\u2026 at this point, I am in favour of moving forward and going forward with\nwhat the majority of Council decided to approve at the time,\u201d said Mayor Tom\nMrakas at the GC meeting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Voting against the motion at the following week\u2019s Council\nmeeting, however, were Councillors John Gallo and Wendy Gaertner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Councillor Gallo, who was never a proponent of lands\nformally designated for employment use being reclassified for recreational\npurposes, reiterated his position that the potential $3 million price tag to\nbuild the two diamonds was not a sound investment for the municipality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cLand value, we paid $7 million. We\u2019re paying at least $3\nmillion [for construction]. We\u2019re at $10 million for two baseball diamonds, no\ntaxes in perpetuity on employment lands, highly valued employment lands, and I\nwholeheartedly, once again, believe this is a mistake,\u201d he said. \u201cWe should not\nbe building recreational facilities on employment lands and to spend $5 million\nper baseball diamond just blows my mind how we are moving forward with this. I\ncan\u2019t stress how much I am against this.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Referring to his support for a multiuse facility if the\nland was, in the end, going to be developed for recreational purposes, he\nadded: \u201cWe had a report from staff that had some other recommendations. I tried\nmy best to influence, to try and do what I think would have been a better\nsolution and have the best use of that land, if we were going to have it as\nrecreational facilities. Clearly the will of Council isn\u2019t there and the\nmajority of you support spending $5 million per baseball diamond on employment\nlands, losing taxes in perpetuity.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Speaking against the matter, Councillor Gaertner said she\nwas \u201ctorn.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI am torn because we don\u2019t have enough recreation land and we missed an opportunity in the 2C lands to buy a nice, flat piece of land from the developers,\u201d she said. \u201cWe need to provide the diamonds but, on the other hand, we\u2019re maybe in a very difficult financial situation because of COVID-19 and, because of that, I have to change the way I voted and agree with Councillor Gallo. I will be voting against this.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n\r\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Council has formally renewed its vision to turn the Hallmark lands into a hub for community baseball. On a vote of 5 \u2013 2 last month, Council voted to nix a proposed indoor baseball training facility for the land in favour of their original vision of two full-size baseball diamonds to address Town-wide diamond shortages […]<\/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-26957","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\/p3D2k4-70N","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-07-26 02:13:16","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\/26957","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=26957"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26957\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26957"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26957"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26957"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}