{"id":35882,"date":"2025-02-20T14:03:33","date_gmt":"2025-02-20T19:03:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=35882"},"modified":"2025-02-20T14:03:35","modified_gmt":"2025-02-20T19:03:35","slug":"victoria-hall-could-get-new-lease-on-life-as-town-looks-for-new-armoury-cafe-tenants","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/victoria-hall-could-get-new-lease-on-life-as-town-looks-for-new-armoury-cafe-tenants\/","title":{"rendered":"Victoria Hall could get new lease on life as Town looks for new Armoury, caf\u00e9 tenants"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

From a church, to a school, to a 20-year stint as Aurora\u2019s public library, the historic Victoria Hall on the southwest corner of Victoria and Mosley Streets, has seen many uses since it was first built in 1883.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But, while still in occasional rental use, it is somewhat overpowered these days by its immediate neighbour, Aurora Town Square.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The historic space, however, could see a new lease on life sooner rather than later, as the Town looks for new tenants of the Aurora Armoury and the Caf\u00e9 serving Town Square.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to Aurora CAO Doug Nadorozny, Victoria Hall will be included when the Town seeks expressions of interest on the facilities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The CAO noted this potential new chapter for Victoria Hall at last week\u2019s Committee of the Whole meeting when Ward 1 Councillor Ron Weese asked for more details on the anticipated calls for interest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nadorozny noted the Town is still looking for the best way to roll out the requests for interest as Niagara College\u2019s lease on the Town Square caf\u00e9 is in place until the end of June \u2013 a marked difference from Niagara College\u2019s Canadian Food & Wine Institute which announced it would not renew its lease on the Armoury effective at the end of January.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\u2019re looking at putting out three requests for expressions of interest because they could sort of be related,\u201d he said. \u201cOne is the Caf\u00e9, which Niagara College is also looking after until the end of June [and] they have said they would continue to maintain the contract for that, the Armoury, as well as Victoria Hall, which was the subject of another meeting and the direction we received was to put that out to the public as well. We didn\u2019t want to put one (request) out and then have a potential proponent who said, \u2018If I had known about the other one, I might have been interested in combining it.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAs you can imagine, they are very diverse opportunities and each of the opportunities could be pursued in different ways by potential venders, so we have left the request for expression of interest very wide open. We have covered basically what the facilities are about, how we hope these facilities contribute to a vibrant downtown, plans for Town Square and so on. We have put a lot of information out for consideration by the public and the intention is we would bring the results of that process back to Council. It is not something it is going to be a tender where the lowest price gets it; this will be very subjective and we have identified, for example, the Armoury is a community space and we\u2019re interested in how others view that space and how integrating with things that happen in Town Park, would occur based on their proposals.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nadorozny also assured Council would be provided with, as requested by Councillor Weese, \u201can accounting of the lease agreements with Niagara College\u201d including expenses, rentals, and the revenues that went back to the Town.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Town announced Niagara College had opted to pull out of the Armoury on January 16, with their role there concluding at the end of January. They did, however, commit to honour existing bookings \u2013 including last weekend\u2019s presentation of King Charles III Coronation Medals hosted by Aurora-Oak Ridges-Richmond Hill MP Leah Taylor Roy on February 9.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSince signing their lease with the Town in 2019, as the first tenant of our world class multi-purpose event space, Niagara College has been a valued partner, bringing their expertise and dedication to operating The Armoury and more recently to The Armoury Caf\u00e9,\u201d said Mayor Tom Mrakas in a statement at the time. \u201cTogether, we created dynamic spaces that offered residents and visitors exceptional dining experiences while showcasing innovative culinary education. We wish Niagara College further success as they pursue their new strategic priorities.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

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

From a church, to a school, to a 20-year stint as Aurora\u2019s public library, the historic Victoria Hall on the southwest corner of Victoria and Mosley Streets, has seen many uses since it was first built in 1883. But, while still in occasional rental use, it is somewhat overpowered these days by its immediate neighbour, […]<\/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-35882","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\/p3D2k4-9kK","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-14 13:54:44","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\/35882","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=35882"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35882\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35883,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35882\/revisions\/35883"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35882"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35882"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35882"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}