Immigration centre happy to stay put
You ask... We answer
Q: The Canadian Immigration department bought the old Pontiac car dealership property on Portage Road in Niagara Falls some time ago. They renovated it, now it’s vacant and up for sale. Are there no more immigrants to process? Did they build a newer processing centre somewhere? How much money is the public going to lose this time around?
A: The building is occupied by Citizenship and Immigration Canada and it’s not going anywhere for at least two years.
Public Services and Procurement Canada, which manages the operational needs of the federal government, said Citizenship and Immigration Canada holds a lease for the space at 4318 Portage Road but it doesn’t own it.
The building is in the process of being sold by the current owner, but PSPC spokesman Graham Holt said in an email the sale of the building will not affect the status of the lease.
Holt said the lease doesn’t expire until April 2021 and there are no plans to move Citizenship and Immigration Canada before the expiry.
In the meantime, he said PSPC is working in consultation with Citizenship and Immigration Canada to plan accordingly for their accommodation needs beyond 2021.
The Niagara Falls branch of Citizenship and Immigration Canada moved into the former Border Pontiac dealership on Portage Road in April 2012 because the lease at its previous location on McLeod Road had expired.
The dealership space was completely renovated into office space to meet the federal agency’s needs.
The office takes refugee claims in person between 8 a.m. and 4 p.m. Monday to Friday and provides other immigration and citizenship services by appointment.
Q: Visiting Welland and can’t make sense of the street numbers. For example, the first house on Kilgour Avenue is No. 15, the next house is No. 23. Other streets are numbered the same way.
A: The city is addressing future development.
Grant Munday, Welland’s manager of development approvals, said they leave gaps in address numbers in case a lot is severed off between houses.
Munday said the city doesn’t know what the planning rules will be 50 years from now or what kind of development will be the trend. Minimum lot sizes change over time with zoning. Leaving gaps in the addressing means there room for expansion in the future. It also avoids having all the people on a street change their addresses to accommodate the new property.
“It can be problematic. You get a lot of complaints from people saying, ‘Well now I’ve got to change my address because this guy wants to put a lot in,’ so leaving the space in between helps to avoid that,” he said.
“It still does happen sometimes that we have to change addresses but this really helps to eliminate it if we leave that extra space in between from house to house.”
The pre-planning of address gaps was done in older neighbourhoods and is continuing in new developments, such as Sparrow Meadows off Webber Road. That development has five address spaces between the lots.
Munday said the city tries to match up addresses across the road from each other as much as possible. That means when emergency personnel are responding to a call and see No. 135 on one side, they can expect to see No. 136 lined up on the other side.
Munday said a big reason for planning for the future is related to 911 emergency calls. If there isn’t room for a number between addresses, the city will have to assign a letter with the address.
The problem is computer systems don’t work well with letter addresses.
Munday said there was a big review of addressing in Niagara a few years ago and a 911 advisory committee looked at addresses in all municipalities and scored them. Municipalities corrected some of the problems identified by the advisory committee, which included addresses with numbers and duplication of street names.