Dear editor:

Between the town’s press release of April 9 and NOTL developer and resident Rainer Hummel’s opinions in the Niagara Now on April 10 (“Who pays? NOTL hospital site vision sparks backlash from local developer, resident“), it is pretty obvious which way the hot air is blowing.

So, Mr. Hummel’s answer is: “The town should put the property up for sale and allow the highest bidder to present a proposal. If that fails, he said it should be sold off and left to a private buyer to decide what to do with it.”

Maybe that way we could have fancy big hotels at each end of Queen to bookend Parliament Oak?

And what exactly is the town’s concept? After the extensive costly exercise over the past year, which determined that 25 per cent of residents considered parking a good future use and fully 39 per cent said that parking should not occur on the site?

The architectural drawings presented at the March 24 council meeting clearly shows at least 80 per cent of both floors of the “new” building are devoted to parking spaces.

The excellent consultation and report led by Denise Horne identified that the site should remain in town ownership and what uses it should serve and came with clear recommendations; of which number three was to “identify community partners,” and they even provided guiding principles to assist in decision-making.

The James Burton Foundation has already heavily invested in community outreach and planning based on the identified needs and desires of the community.

Instead of working with the foundation, we have decided to spend an additional $80,000 refining what staff or council or our lord mayor seem to think we need to identify before we can go to a request for proposal.

The hospital as such was closed 10 years ago and was bought by the town in 2018. At the end of the last term of council, there was a request for proposal process embarked upon, which frustrated many and was pointed to as a failure of the last administration.

Hopefully, history won’t repeat itself.

Bob Bader
NOTL