Businesses suffered during tent city summer, Guiel says

Many downtown businesses suffered during the summer of tent city and probably wouldn’t survive if homeless encampments were to crop up again next year, the Downtown Business Improvement Area’s executive director said at a police board meeting Tuesday.

Terry Guiel told the Peterborough Police Services Board that 30 or 40 downtown establishments saw business decrease between 30 and 60 per cent this summer while homeless encampments existed downtown.

“I’ve never seen more businesses on the cusp of closing,” Guiel said.

Guiel made a deputation to the police board on Tuesday night for two reasons: to ask for more police officers on foot patrol downtown following the summer of tent city and to ask that the police board consider looking first at downtown locations for a site for a new police station that’s planned in the next few years.

Tent city was the term used to describe the homeless encampments that were set up in the Peterborough County-owned Victoria Park along with at St. John’s Anglican Church and at city hall this summer after the Warming Room shelter closed July 1.

The encampments have all since been dismantled, but Guiel said he’s still hearing about it from “dozens and dozens of business owners.”

“Some feel abandoned by police — and I know it’s not the police’s fault,” Guiel said at the meeting. “Please — we ask that you increase the complement of officers downtown.” Desmond Vandenberg, the owner of The Black Horse Pub,

spoke at the meeting too. He said there were people defecating in his flower pots this summer and vomiting in the gutters. He added that many customers stayed away because they thought the downtown was unsafe.

Guiel was also there to speak to the board about a proposal to replace the police station over the next few years.

The current Peterborough Police station on Water Street is 51 years old and overcrowded; an architect told city councillors in

June their best option is a new 95,000-square-foot building on a six-acre property (the current station’s property is about 1.6 acres).

Councillors received the report and haven’t discussed a potential location. But Guiel said he’s concerned it could end up someplace along Highway 7/115 or Highway 7 because it could need lots of land.

“It shouldn’t be out in a cow pasture,” he said, because downtown has services such as courts and methadone clinics. He wanted the board to vow to look downtown first.

Police Chief Scott Gilbert pointed out that city council hasn’t decided yet how it might replace the police station and it certainly hasn’t settled on a “sprawling” station on the highway. Gilbert also said the city is planning a new mini police station in an unused commercial space in the downtown bus terminal, which will increase police presence there.

Deputy Chief Tim Farquharson added there were two officers dedicated to patrolling Victoria Park and other encampments this summer and that security cameras installed outside businesses nearby helped with policing tent city.