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| Zach Neal. |
From Barbara Simpson,
Sarnia Observer.
Demolish
the former Sarnia General Hospital buildings.
That’s
the message Sarnia’s elected officials and city staff heard loud and clear
Tuesday from the public at the second of two consultant-facilitated input
meetings held on the future of the derelict hospital site.
Demolition
was ranked the No. 1 priority by those in attendance at Tuesday’s public
meeting, followed in second by a need to motivate city council and staff to
take action.
“I think
it comes down to people wanting us to move quickly on this because this has
been an issue for five years now,” city/county Coun. Anne Marie Gillis said
following Tuesday’s meeting.
About 50
people – including a mix of neighbours, elected officials and city staff, and
at least one developer – turned out for the public input workshop held at the
Lambton College Event Centre Tuesday night.
The
two-hour workshop – led by consultant Bryan Boyle – saw participants list and
rank the merits and challenges of redeveloping the former hospital site, as
well as possible redevelopment opportunities and actions that can be taken.
Editorial
Opinion:
It would be extremely unfair to municipal ratepayers
to be asked to pay $8.8 million to demolish the old Sarnia General Hospital,
only to sell the land to private developers for what, $800,000.00, or $1.1
million, or whatever it turns out to be. This is why city council hasn’t
already moved on it, when clearly it is a job that needs to be done. The
province downloaded all these ‘assets’ when they switched over to the LHINs,
(local health integration networks), some years ago, and therefore the province
certainly should bear some of the costs. We see it as a possible partnership—bearing
in mind the federal government’s alleged renewed commitment to affordable housing
in Canada. If the costs were split four ways, it would be $2.2 million each,
city, province, federal government and private developer.
It doesn’t necessarily have to be a 25 % split for
each party. This could be subject to a process of negotiation, assuming some
concrete proposals by developers.
The end result would be a
ratio of geared-to-income, affordable, and executive suites, with a hundred or
two new housing units. That mix of income levels is necessary in order to prevent the development from becoming a 'human zoo', or perhaps public blight is a better term.
The developer would of
course get all kinds of corporate welfare, including some assistance with
construction costs, deferred taxes, etc. This would be designed to compensate
them for the higher asking price for the serviced land, which clearly makes the
initial capital investment more difficult to justify to company shareholders.
Thank you for reading.
