At the April 27th Council Meeting the Community expressed their unanimous opposition to losing the Community Centre and using parkland for a private business venture.
There were 151 written comments submitted by the community. 149 objected to the staff recommendation, one wanted more time for public consultation and another wanted the sale opened up to the public. There were 80 comments submitted by the public at the April 6th meeting. The majority objected to the recommendation and many were concerned about the process and timing and were asking for a deferral. Thanks to everybody for submitting comments.
YouTube is showing close to 600 views of the Apr 27th meeting. Meeting views are typically under 100. So a lot of interest out there, an in person public meeting would have been huge!
17 residents spoke at the meeting, all were opposed to a portion of/or the complete recommendation. Many points of view were expressed. The meeting went for just under 3 hours and can be viewed here: YouTube April 27th Meeting (click)
The Director of Community Services did a presentation and that is now on the Middlesex Centre Website: Proposal Presentation - Scott Mairs (click)
We encourage you to review his presentation. We would like to give our perspective on a few of his points.
1. He reported that only Municipal property was considered for this proposal.
2. He reported that the Community Centre was used around 43-46% of available time. This was based on 130 hours of available time per week. 130 hours per week means he was looking at available time as 5:30 AM to midnight 7 days a week. We think using 130 hours of availability is a pretty high bar. He also said the average hours per week of use was 56.2. That comes out on average to 8 hours a day. To us that would say the Centre is used a lot.
3. He indicated that a significant amount of misinformation is circulating about how much of the parkland would remain. He said 22.9 acres of park and green space will remain after the 6 acres are removed. He is including 3-4 acres that is fenced off for the water tower, storage facility and pumping station. We say there will only be 19 to 20 acres of parkland left. We’ll let you decide who is spreading misinformation. We still say we are losing 25% of the park.
4. He reported that most of the 6 acres is currently hard surface, covered by the Community Centre and parking lot. Not to be unkind but this is not true. We say that this proposal is taking away about 4 acres of green space. We stand by our numbers. A quick check of the concept site plan will back up our number.
5. He indicated that maybe the t-ball diamond would remain. Good, but where?
6. He offered up the idea of a dog park. We feel the decision on putting in a dog park is not dependent on this business venture.
After The Director of Community Services presentation the investor group representative talked. He said he was not speaking to comment on the future of the Community Centre, that was not his decision to make. We would agree, this issue is between staff/council and the community. We are still confident he will build elsewhere if the recommendation is turned down. He clarified that OHIP covers the sports medicine physicians and orthopedic surgeons and no referrals were required. He stated that this is not a private clinic. We wish him success with this venture on another site. We need to remember that almost all of his clients will come from outside of Middlesex Centre. Once word spreads across Ontario about his business it’s going to be a busy place. Another good reason not to build it in a residential area.
After the investor representative the 17 residents spoke and expressed their objections. Please watch the YouTube to find out what was said.
One note on Mr. Nakamura who reported that he had 275 names on a paper petition. Unfortunately the 1,172 names on his online petition were not going to be recognized as they were missing addresses. It appears that if you signed the online petition you will be getting instructions on sending an email to the clerk so that the online petition numbers will be recognized.
The next meeting is May 4th to which you can send in more comments and/or speak. The vote on the staff report is scheduled to happen at this meeting.
Details are on the Middlesex Centre website: See: Attend or Watch the May 4, 2022 Special Council Meeting (virtual) (click)
We encourage you to participate in any way you can.