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By: Marc Miquel Helsen | Posted: August 30, 2008

	LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION Hugh Weltz and Cal Cressman want the public’s input about Sobeys Inc. plans to move the downtown Foodland to the old Price Chopper building in Elmira’s south end. Both are convinced the change will be more than just an inconvenience for core residents and businesses.

Sobeys Inc.’s decision to close its Price Chopper in Elmira and transfer the Foodland operation to the south-end location is meeting with some resistance.
Downtown residents and businesspeople are looking to launch a petition campaign, and Woolwich officials are concerned about the move’s impact on the core.
The flurry of activity follows the grocery chain’s decision to close the two-year-old Price Chopper store Sept. 9, replacing it with the Foodland store currently located at Church and Arthur streets.
“The biggest negative impacts … are going to be [on] the seniors; those people who can walk and those people who still drive horse-and-buggies, who still have to come into town and then drive two-and-a-half, three kilometres down the road to get their groceries,” said Cal Cressman who, along with Elmira BIA chair Hugh Weltz, is working to start a petition to assess public opinion about the move.
“I think through the logistics it’s not going to be as good a move as Sobeys thinks it is. It’s going to affect a lot of other businesses in downtown Elmira more than it’s going to be a benefit,” said Weltz.
The relocation leaves the future of the building now home to Foodland in limbo. Rumour has it a Giant Tiger store is in the works, but nothing has been decided. Sobeys recently renewed its lease of the building, owned by Ken and Naomi Freiburger, for another five years. The Freiburger family has owned the building since 1946 when it was called Freiburger’s Meat Market, and owned the business until they sold it ten years ago, when Freiburger’s IGA became Elmira IGA before adopting the Foodland banner.
The business anchor in the area for more than 60 years, the store will be missed mostly by those residents who do not drive, said Weltz, adding that a shuttle bus, of which there is now talk, is not an adequate alternative.
“It sounds great, but people would like to shop when they want to shop, not when you want to bus them there.”
The fact that Mennonite shoppers driving horse-and-buggies will have to head southwards to the town limits to shop will also prove problematic.
Noting Sobeys is entitled under the planning act to make the move, it isn’t in the community’s best interest, said Dan Kennaley, the township’s director of engineering and planning.
“I don’t think it’s going to be good from a community planning perspective. I can appreciate that the supermarket chain involved has to make a decision from a business perspective, but I wish they would take into account and give greater weight to community planning concerns at the same time,” he said.
“This is not a good situation for them; everybody’s going to have to drive further and from an environmental perspective, in terms of pollution and so forth, ideally we want to be driving less not more, and I think this development is going to have the effect of causing people to drive more – that is not a good thing.”
That said, if Sobeys, which has a five-year lease on the Freiburger building, chooses to move in another grocery-type business, the change could be beneficial for locals, said George Read, president of the Woolwich Seniors Association. That group is lobbying council for the creation of a seniors’ apartment building on the vacant lot formerly home to Procast Foundries on Church Street East and Memorial Avenue. One of the advantages of the location is that it’s within walking distance of downtown shops, including the current supermarket.
If Foodland moves, the prospect of a Giant Tiger store would meet some of the grocery as well as retail needs, but if the store remains vacant, that could prove devastating to residents, especially seniors, said Read.
For their part, the people at Sobeys are convinced their studies of the issue show they are on the right track for serving Elmira residents.
“We understand the importance of a vibrant downtown and we’re currently working with possible partners for opportunities for that site,” spokesperson Tracy Chisholm said in an earlier interview.
Cressman, however, remains unconvinced.
“It boggles my mind to think that they’ve done their homework, because moving that store impacts so many people in this area,” he said.
“The company officials who made the decision to move it, I don’t believe for a moment, understand the dynamics of a small community.”
While Weltz and Cressman will take their petition to council in the near future, they lament the poor foresight that allowed for so many grocery stores to conglomerate in the town’s southern end.
“They did it backwards; the planning department put the cart before the horse again …,” said Weltz. “Now we have three grocery stores and there was only room for two.”
The township has its own concerns about the current arrangement, and will be approaching Sobeys to find a solution.
“We’re certainly going to talk with them and see if anything can be done. I’m not optimistic, but, nonetheless, we will do what we can to persuade them to achieve a better balance between economic concerns and community planning,” said Kennaley adding that the township will look at the possibility of adding a provision to its official plan that would prohibit the creation of another supermarket in Elmira unless it were located in the downtown area.

By: Vanessa Moss | Posted: August 30, 2008

Woolwich and Wellesley townships were offered a double shot of government money this week through two joint federal-provincial infrastructure initiatives.
The first, announced Monday, is part of the Investing in Ontario Act, and will see Woolwich receive $941,385 and Wellesley $468,777 for new and/or existing capital projects. Provincially, a total $1.1 billion will be allocated, including more than $45 million for communities in Waterloo Region.
This one-time investment was derived from the province’s $1.7 billion surplus for the past fiscal year.
Once the cheques are handed out in September, it will be up to the municipalities to decide how best to spend the money, said Leeanna Pendergast, MPP for Kitchener-Conestoga. They will be held to accountability requirements however, through reports to the province about how the funds were used.
For Woolwich, the timing of this announcement is perfect as council recently endorsed the development of a five-year, detailed capital budget, said township chief administrative officer David Brenneman.
“That [funding] will allow us through that [budget] process as well to be able to take a very informative report to council on the priority infrastructure projects that we think we should go ahead with.
“We’re not unlike other municipalities: this funding is welcomed, much-needed and certainly there is a number of infrastructure projects that I’m sure once we have this … budget prepared, will be spelled out in much greater detail.”
Although Pendergast said that the sooner this money is put to use, the better, because it will create more jobs for area residents, in Woolwich there is too much construction already on the go to add any more this fall, Brenneman said.
“We certainly have a full slate of projects and then some on our work schedule for this year, so certainly anything that we’re planning or prioritizing now is for 2009.”
In Wellesley Township, a similar story may play out since council has yet to discuss possible uses of the funds, said CAO Susan Duke.
Like Brenneman, she was pleased with this week’s announcement, but was also quick to point out its shortfalls.
“Of course it’s absolutely vital that the municipality have access to the financial resources to repair infrastructure: we have a huge deficit in our infrastructure and we don’t have the funding to be able to maintain and to improve it, so we rely on these kinds of funding opportunities. But the one concern is that this is a one-time situation, in other words it’s not a continuing source of revenue for the municipality.”
As well, since the money was allocated based on population, small communities such as Wellesley are left in a familiar predicament: the costs of building a bridge or repairing a road are similar in both the rural areas and in the cities, but the former receives significantly less funding.
In response to this criticism, Pendergast argued that the distribution formula has been carefully developed to be fair and to address the needs of all Ontario communities.
“I think that we’re quite happy with what we’ve received in the last eight months. … We are visibly seeing the difference it’s making to our infrastructure projects in the municipalities.”
Further supporting this assessment was the second announcement made this week that the townships could be eligible to receive even more money. Ontario communities with populations under 100,000 can apply for portions of $724 million in funding from the Communities Component of the Building Canada Fund (a joint provincial-federal Infrastructure Framework Agreement worth $6.2 billion). In the program’s first stage, a total $200 million will be handed out.
If a community project receives approval, two thirds of the cost will come from the higher levels of government and the municipalities must chip in the final chunk. Projects will be evaluated by a federal-provincial committee to determine if they qualify under the 17 eligible categories of infrastructure, including areas like drinking and waste water, public transit, sport, tourism and airports.
“These are the things that we constantly are trying to get attention for in our small local communities,” Pendergast said. “So, this is further going to support us.”
Again, Brenneman noted the convenient timing of this funding that can now be included in Woolwich’s capital budget.
“We will have some good priority infrastructure projects to make application for.”
That said, he is anxious to learn more about the eligibility requirements to determine if some of Woolwich’s big plans meet the criteria.
“We’re hoping certainly that the federal government will also allow for some funding or program funding that would help with the completion of, for example, the Woolwich Memorial Centre. … We’re holding out some hope; whether we’ll be successful or not remains to be seen.”
Duke said that Wellesley Township has yet to decide how it will respond to this application-based funding; with a population of about 10,000, the area might be at a disadvantage once again.
Defining small communities as those with under 100,000 people is too broad a classification, she said.
“Has a movement [to lower the population thresholds] been made? Yes it has. Has it satisfied everybody’s objectives? Possibly not, but it’s getting better.”
Applications for and more information about the Communities Component of the Building Canada Fund will be released Sept. 12 on the Ontario BCF Communities Component website.

By: Marc Miquel Helsen | Posted: August 30, 2008

A St. Clements resident looking to install a pool won’t be doing the backstroke anytime soon, having just kicked off the zone-change process needed to proceed.
While a public meeting in the Crosshill council chambers Tuesday night saw no objections raised, councillors deferred making a decision on the request. The township has also circulated the application to other agencies, such as the Grand River Conservation Authority, and is awaiting responses.
Current zoning on the Peter Street property prohibits construction of a backyard pool, forcing the owner to seek an amendment to the bylaw. As with other homes in that part of St. Clements, concerns about underground septic systems led to the restrictions being put in place when the subdivision was built.
In recent years, those concerns have faded and the township has granted others similar zoning amendments.
“We’d like to put a swimming pool; it’s going to be tastefully done, it’s not going to encroach on any of the neighbours or change any of the elevations of the property,” homeowner Doug Bruns told council.
The applicant is looking for a relatively speedy process.
Steve Jefferson, of K Smart Associates – the consulting firm representing the township while it searches for someone to replace departed planner Craig Hockaday – noted that with the construction season nearing its end, the consulting firm would seek to expedite feedback from those agencies with the intention of having a report ready for council by mid-September.
The main reason that pools are not permitted in this area has to do with servicing issues.
Part of a subdivision that was approved in the early 1990s, when knowledge of the hydro-geologic impacts from septic tank installations was not what it is today, the area was subjected to a set of standards established by Waterloo Region’s public health department, chief administrative officer Susan Duke explained in an interview.
With no sanitary sewers in the area, the township decided each property should provide enough room for: an existing tile field, an additional redundant tile field in event that the first one failed, and a septic system. In order to ensure space for all three components, pools were eliminated from the list of permitted uses.
Despite the abundance of tertiary treatment systems, in 2006, the council of the day revisited the matter and chose to continue with the status quo so as to ensure a double-check mechanism, leaving the health unit to make evaluations based on hydrogeolic requirements.
The applicant has already submitted documentation to the health department regarding the suitability of the site and the department has accepted the analysis that there would be adequate room on the property for a pool and a reserve area for a septic bed.
“The regional health department reviewed an analysis of the soil conditions on the property. … [A]fter the pool is constructed there would be room on the property for a new septic bed to be constructed,” Jefferson told council.
Bruns’ request comes as the township is reviewing its policies about pools, particularly enforcement of building permits and its pool fence bylaw.
Earlier this month, Wellesley resident Kim Ruthig approached council requesting it return the $125 building permit fee he paid when installing a pool last spring, noting others in the township have simply gone ahead with projects, not bothering to conform to the requirements that pools deeper than 30 inches be surrounded by a secure, five-foot fence. At that time, councillors directed staff to prepare a report, which is due Sept. 2, dealing with issues relating to building permits, fees, the payment of fees and penalties.