Demo delayed by search for squatters
Old Queenston Street hospital to start coming down this month
Mike Starnino has caught glimpses of people in the distance, running through the debris-filled hallways of the longabandoned hospital.
The owner of Starnino Environmental Recovery Inc. has also seen telltale signs that the huge building on Queenston Street in St. Catharines continues to be a home for people with nowhere else to go.
“You can walk through and never see anybody, but you will see signs — a mattress or some clothes where they slept overnight,” said Starnino, whose St. Catharines-based company was hired to demolish the building to make way for a new mid- to highrise apartment building development.
Although the building’s current owner Queenston Oakdale Ltd. has taken steps to secure the property, Starnino said the property was previously left almost abandoned with few precautions taken to keep people out. As a result, he said, it became home to squatters who continue to return to the building — cutting their way through fences and prying open boarded up windows to gain access.
“The people who are vulnerable and homeless, who have problems, we need to get them out and get them situated,” Starnino said. “It has to be done sympathetically. These people have problems. We have to address the problems.”
And despite the urgency in the community to tear down the eyesore, Starnino said the project will not proceed if there’s even
the slightest risk involved.
“I’m not interested in hurting anybody. No, no, that’s not the way it’s going to go,” he said. “I don’t care how fast the city and the developer want it down, I’m not going to jeopardize hurting somebody.”
Niagara Region’s homelessness services director, Cathy Cousins, said her department has been working with the City of St. Catharines as well as local agencies to assist people who may be displaced by the imminent demolition of the building.
Cousins said outreach workers from Gateway Residential Services and Quest Community Health Centre will be visiting the site as soon as possible, offering help to anyone they find inside.
“There’s a broad range of potential supports that will be made available in the event there are actually individuals there when we gain entrance,” Cousins said, adding the site visit is being coordinated through Mayor Walter Sendzik’s office.
“Between the two outreach agencies that are participating, we’ll ensure that they (squatters) get housing help, that they get access to shelters and we’ll assess their needs,” Cousins said.
Meanwhile, demolition workers have also been dealing with ongoing vandalism.
For instance, Starnino said St. Catharines firefighters were called to the building early Wednesday morning, when someone set a small fire on the roof to burn the insulation from electrical wires that had been pulled from the building’s walls.
But despite the delays, he hopes demolition will begin before Christmas. Workers have been preparing the site for the project.
“We’re just in the preliminary stages of getting the equipment there, setting up an office … all the stuff. We’re getting all the paperwork — everything that the city requires.”
Once that process is complete, he said, smaller outbuildings located at the east end of the property will be the first to be torn down. Demolition crews will then work their way around the back of the building towards the west, before starting on the main hospital.
Michael Corrado, a partner with Queenston Oakdale Ltd., has previously estimated it would take five months to complete the demolition, but Starnino said it could take twice that long, depending on potential delays such as inclement weather.
“I don’t want to make a career out of it. I want to get in and out,” Starnino said. “But it has to be done environmentally safe, and safe for the people and the workers.”
He plans to clean up debris as the work progresses, “not leaving piles of garbage all over the place.”
“We’ll do it systematically,” he said.
Referring to piles of rubble that have been left behind for months after parts of the old General Motors plant were demolished on Ontario Street, Starnino said: “I don’t want this to turn out like that, and it won’t.
“Michael (Corrado), that owns the property and his company, they’re very good people. They’re not fly by night. They’re not promising the world, but if they say something, they’ll follow through.”
And as a St. Catharines resident and the owner of a business that is located only a few blocks away from the building, Starnino said he, too, has a vested interest in the project.
“I’m part of the community as far as my business is concerned, so I do not want have any stones left unturned — anything stupid. I need to do everything and I want to everything, because I also live in St. Catharines. As part of the community, I want to do the right thing.”