{"id":38185,"date":"2026-05-21T13:23:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-21T17:23:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=38185"},"modified":"2026-05-21T13:23:20","modified_gmt":"2026-05-21T17:23:20","slug":"council-public-divided-on-future-use-of-victoria-hall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/council-public-divided-on-future-use-of-victoria-hall\/","title":{"rendered":"Council, public divided on future use of Victoria Hall"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The future of Victoria Hall could go commercial after Council considered the next chapter for the downtown Aurora landmark last week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Council voted in favour of a decision coming out of a Closed Session meeting on May 12 where the topic of discussion was a lease agreement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Approval came on a vote of 4 \u2013 3, with Mayor Tom Mrakas and Councillors Rachel Gilliland, Michael Thompson, and Harold Kim voting for it to move forward, while Councillors Ron Weese, Wendy Gaertner, and John Gallo voted against.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although Council members were limited in what they could say on the lease on the building, located on the southwest corner of Mosley and Victoria Streets, as it was discussed in camera, members who opposed the agreement said they believed it was not in the community\u2019s best interest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019m not in favour of proceeding with what\u2019s being recommended,\u201d said Ward 5\u2019s Councillor Gallo. \u201cThere\u2019s only so much I can say, but I believe that we\u2019re making a mistake and there are things yet to be decided. I don\u2019t agree with the direction that is being proposed.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Added Councillor Gaertner: \u201cI\u2019m not in favour of this, either. I don\u2019t believe it\u2019s in residents\u2019 best interests.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mayor Mrakas, on the other hand, offered a different viewpoint.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019ll say I do believe this is in the best interest of the Town, the residents, and it\u2019s part of revitalizing our downtown,\u201d he said. \u201cI think residents in this community [will be] very, very excited once they find out the details, which will hopefully be coming out as soon as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While the lease agreement is still under wraps, last week\u2019s meeting was also an opportunity for Council to speak on a number of documents related to the controversial renovation plan for Victoria Hall that were previously subject to Closed Session confidentiality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While some members welcomed the release of the documents, others said disclosures did not go far enough \u2013 particularly as they relate to the future tenancy and use of the building.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One document missing from the disclosure, said Ward 1 Councillor Ron Weese, related to the scope of work that will be carried out on the building, which he said was important \u201cbecause it identifies the intent of the use of the facility,\u201d including a note that part of the intent is to create a space \u201cto generate an economically sustainable model for the operators.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI guess the assumption here is that this is going to be a commercial use, as opposed to just the refurbishment, so the purpose of the document was to uncover some of these things\u2026 and it would have been good to have this information well in advance,\u201d said Councillor Weese, referencing concerns offered by residents at the podium earlier in the meeting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe respondents [to an RFP] were asked to prepare a comprehensive business model to the scope of work for improving and leasing the Hall, which implies commercial use once again, not community use.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Responding to Councillor Weese was Aurora CAO Doug Nadorozny who said the RFP was not \u201cspecifically geared to necessarily commercial use,\u201d but it was an option on the table.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The RFP called for pitches on the use of the historic Aurora Armoury, previously home to a campus of Niagara College\u2019s Canadian Food and Wine Institute, the caf\u00e9 space at Aurora Town Hall, which was also operated by Niagara College, and Victoria Hall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since Slabtown Cider Company took over the Armoury last year, and Newmarket\u2019s My Indie Coffee the Aurora Town Square caf\u00e9 space, Victoria Hall was the last piece of the puzzle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nadorozny noted the \u201csignificance\u201d of the Victoria Hall building to the community was considered in the process, which was \u201cconsistent with the aims of the Town in terms of developing these properties [into] spaces that could be leveraged by the community.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Also raising questions on the disclosure was Councillor Gallo, who questioned why documents related to the Class D cost estimate to renovate Victoria Hall also remain under wraps.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Staff said 23 documents related to Victoria Hall were examined for disclosure and this was one of four \u201cflagged for further review.\u201d The reason, they said, is these documents involve third-party financial information and were subject to ongoing negotiation on potential procurement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis information was shared with Council during the initial debate by me and at the time\u2026we had checked with the consultant, they were fine with it, they wanted to have some things clarified, but, in essence, they were fine with it,\u201d said Nadorozny. \u201cI believe I used wording to the effect of, \u2018We would prefer this information remained private\u2019 because of this procurement that we have not completed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s just a timing thing. We\u2019re happy to issue that full report eventually, but, as a normal course of business, we wouldn\u2019t put our preliminary estimates and so on in anticipation of ultimately going to the market to get a quote.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Councillor Gallo nevertheless said the decision to keep this confidential was \u201cdisappointing\u201d to the public.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI think they have every right to see this,\u201d he contended. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of value to that document, to the public, to have full transparency on how we make decisions and it\u2019s disappointing to see that. You have a consultant, the author, saying okay, we have this Council, I believe, saying okay, there\u2019s no link to the third party [and] we can\u2019t release it to the public. That\u2019s not transparency. That is not the way we should be conducting businesses on a $2.1 million project. It\u2019s disappointing to see, but it is what it is. Control is clearly out of our hands. Other people, staff, make the final decision.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

Potential lease agreement still under wraps<\/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":[4,3,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38185","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general_news","category-headline_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-9VT","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-28 14:57:20","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\/38185","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=38185"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38185\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38186,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38185\/revisions\/38186"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38185"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}