{"id":5508,"date":"2014-02-12T17:31:12","date_gmt":"2014-02-12T22:31:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=5508"},"modified":"2014-02-19T15:38:21","modified_gmt":"2014-02-19T20:38:21","slug":"councillors-unconvinced-about-viability-of-heritage-park-plan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/councillors-unconvinced-about-viability-of-heritage-park-plan\/","title":{"rendered":"Councillors unconvinced about viability of Heritage Park plan"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

Councillors will have a second chance to sound off on negotiating the sale of three historic and century homes on Yonge Street this week before final approval. <\/p>\n

For Mayor Geoffrey Dawe and at least three Councillors, it will be another opportunity to share their concerns about the plan before Council ultimately gives the green light to what could potentially be a $10 million deal for the three properties. <\/p>\n

After pitches from consultants and proponents of the plan, some members of Council remained unconvinced this was an opportunity Aurora couldn\u2019t afford to pass up and cited concerns not only with costs, but also the practicality of the plan before them \u2013 particularly when it has yet to be determined just what the final uses of these buildings might be in the future.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t necessarily believe this project has the viability in my mind to continue to move forward,\u201d said Councillor Paul Pirri of the proposal. \u201cMaybe land speculation isn\u2019t the right term, but we buy the properties now without necessarily knowing what you\u2019re going to do with them, I don\u2019t think that is the business of the municipality.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although Councillors voicing their support for giving the okay to begin negotiations with the owners of the three properties (the Aurora Historical Society owns Hillary House, realtor Bruce Spragg the Readman House, and historian John McIntyre Horton Place) in order to have a clearer view of both a final price tag for the deal and potential governmental and private sector support, others weren\u2019t quite as convinced this would just be one step. <\/p>\n

\u201cThere are definitely some issues in the closed session report I definitely think need to be addressed by members of Council in terms of our own due diligence, so we will have that conversation at another time,\u201d said Councillor Michael Thompson, noting he wanted some reassurances of what grants would be available in the future to help offset the cost of the plan. \u201cOne of the concerns about moving forward and doing this without going through the grant process is we\u2019re leaving money on the table. We are essentially shortchanging the taxpayers.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is all about public, private partnerships and bringing those people in to the fold and making sure we can capitalize on every dollar that is available. Moving forward, we are losing that opportunity to leverage a site that has both national and provincial associations to garner additional money to reduce the costs to Aurora taxpayers.\u201d<\/p>\n

From the perspective of municipal staff, however, before that idea can be more fully explored, Aurora Council needs to either commit to the properties or have firm intentions on what they plan to do with them. Without the lands being in municipal hands, Federal and Provincial agencies are less likely to come to the table.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere has been lots of discussions with regards to partnerships, so we can continue to have those discussions,\u201d said Al Downey, Aurora\u2019s Director of Parks and Recreation. \u201cWith regards to private and public opportunities, we have had those in other facilities but those were Town-owned. It\u2019s a challenge when we\u2019re looking for partners on a piece of property we don\u2019t presently own.\u201d<\/p>\n

Whether or not the funding is there, or whether or not the partners are there, the plan itself \u2013 as presented \u2013 was missing one very vital piece for Councillor Wendy Gaertner.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would like to see these three heritage properties protected and I think the majority of people in this chamber would like to see that,\u201d she said. \u201cI don\u2019t see anywhere in this report that says this would be a viable heritage park. I know that the consultants weren\u2019t taking a feasibility analysis of one particular vision or another, [but] I don\u2019t see in the opportunities anything about a heritage park and I think we\u2019re going about this backwards.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need to have an analysis of the feasibility study and we have to have a plan of what we\u2019re going to do with this land because it will not come cheaply to the taxpayers and there will be more costs added onto that. Chicken or the egg, I think a study or a plan needs to come first.\u201d<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For Mayor Geoffrey Dawe and at least three Councillors, it will be another opportunity to share their concerns about the plan before Council ultimately gives the green light to what could potentially be a $10 million deal for the three properties. <\/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":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5508","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archive"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-1qQ","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-09-02 12:57:27","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5508","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=5508"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5508\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5508"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5508"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5508"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}