Selling of courthouse and park seriously perplexing
There’s being dumb as a fox. Then, there’s simply being dumb.
Such thoughts came to mind when listening to St. George’s Coun. Sal Sorrento at St. Catharines city council this week.
It seems Sorrento believes St. Catharines owns too many underutilized buildings and has too many underutilized parks.
Specifically, he has suggested the old King Street courthouse and the former Fairview pitchand-putt golf course be sold.
Let’s deal with the park matter first.
No need to talk about the cunningness of foxes here. Sorrento is just being dumb.
Promoting the idea of selling park space for development anywhere in the city is a political head-scratcher. But zeroing in on the Fairview property is even more perplexing.
It’s a patch of green in an asphalt-and-concrete jungle.
And traffic flow can be a real nightmare in this section of the city. There’s the goofy QEW/Geneva Street bottleneck, the highdensity commercial stretch of Lake Street and the YMCA Drive conglomeration of the Home Depot, Staples, the Y and the Fairview Mall.
Yet, Sorrento wants to take away the limited green space there and shoehorn in more development? Aye-yi-yi. That said, he’s not the first person to covetously eye the property.
Five years ago, Greater Niagara Chamber of Commerce policy director Kithio Mwanzia urged city council at a budget meeting to consider selling municipal surplus land and deposit the proceeds in the city’s civic project fund, which was being drained by the building of the puck palace.
As an example, he mentioned the Fairview Mall golf course. Tweeting his support from the audience that night was Mwanzia’s then-boss and now St. Catharines mayor, Walter Sendzik.
A more vigorous effort at re-purposing the property was made in 2002.
CentreCorp Management Services Ltd., the Fairview Mall operators, lobbied council to study the feasibility of building a new road from the mall area to Scott St. through the golf course and adjacent John Gage Park. City public works staff actually supported the idea, arguing it seemed the only way to eliminate the aforementioned nightmare traffic flows in the area.
Council strongly disagreed. No feasibility study was done.
The idea of developing the Fairview green space for commercial interests remains a dumb one. But if Sendzik, now wearing a different hat, still likes the idea and convinces the Siscoe Five to jump on board, who knows what could happen. OK, on to the courthouse. Selling the building, which is unquestionably the most important heritage property in St. Catharines, is another dumb idea. However, I’m willing to consider the possibility Sorrento was using some guile in this instance.
It was noted by Coun. Mark Elliott that the city is preparing a report on possible uses for the courthouse, and it would be “irresponsible” to make a decision on the building ’s fate prior to seeing the results of that study.
True enough. But here’s the thing. Studying future uses of the courthouse has been going on forever.
Some municipal government keeners may recall another long-ago effort at bringing life to the old courthouse. In 1984, the city signed a 25-year lease with businessman Sam Morabito, believing the private-sector might have better luck turning the former house of justice into a people place.
While Morabito had some periodic successes, the building experienced more tomb times than boom times under his watch.
The courthouse reverted to city control in 2009. The idea back then was to come up with uses for the building. Carousel Players, which started renting the top floor during Morabito’s tenure, was retained as a tenant and has enjoyed success there. Other space has occasionally been used for ad hoc civic purposes. But an overall plan has been missing. For eight years.
Now, we’re told a plan is “imminent.” Yeah, s-u-u-u-re it is. Sorrento’s idea to sell the building is ill-conceived and premature. But maybe he was just cunningly trying to light a fire under staff’s butt. You know, being dumb like a fox. Then again, maybe not.