Karen Taylor-Jones was the catalyst for a protest outside Niagara-on-the-Lake town hall two years ago that took the town to task over its decision to greenlight a luxury hotel on King Street.
Today, construction on that hotel is underway, being built where the former Parliament Oak public school used to be — where Taylor-Jones went to school as a young student.
It’s changes to the community like these — namely, she says, developments that are either too large or in the wrong part of town — that motivated the lifelong NOTLer to enter the council race in this fall’s municipal election.
“I should have probably run four years ago,” she said. “I’m just not happy at all with how things have been going the last four years.”
She was particularly inspired to run after a friend encouraged her to do so, also reminding her of the strides her grandmother made in municipal politics more than 80 years ago.
Ruth Petrolia Taylor was the first woman to be elected to the council of Niagara-on-the-Lake in 1945.
“The family has always been community-minded,” she said. “I just have to follow suit, I guess. I want to.”
Taylor-Jones entered the race at the last minute — she was one of three candidates to file her nomination papers the day of the deadline, Aug. 21.
She’s still developing her campaign platform, going through the municipality’s policies and its new official plan, which passed this spring.
For the moment, she frames her platform as such: “right development, right place, right scale and right structure.”
Right now, she feels that while NOTL does have to build up, development is progressing “a little bit faster” than what the town’s infrastructure can handle.
One of the biggest development projects she’s against is the luxury hotel planned for King Street. She organized the community protest outside town hall on July 31, 2024 in response to council approving the hotel in late June that year.
At the time, she criticized the developers for building a hotel in the middle of a residential area and said councillors were “out of control” and “not doing what the townspeople want.”
More than 200 people turned up to the protest outside town hall in Virgil ahead of a council meeting. When councillors showed up, several protesters followed them, some chanting “liar” and “resign.”
Despite the turnout and the noise protesters made on Niagara Stone Road, Taylor-Jones doesn’t feel much was accomplished — such as persuading the town to reverse course on the project.
“The feeling when we left was that the people were not really heard.”
The Parliament Oak hotel was approved in a 5-4 split vote. If she had been part of council in 2024, Taylor-Jones said, she would’ve voted against it.
As for other development projects down the line of which she may be critical, she said that if elected, she wants to make an effort to defeat those plans.
“It’s going to be hard,” she said. “I’m hoping it’s myself that gets in there, because at least I know that I tried my best if it’s something that I disagree with.”
Another project she’s critical of is the rebuilding of the Royal George Theatre on Queen Street. She said she wishes the original theatre, which last 111 years, could’ve been better preserved so that it didn’t have to be torn down due to its age.
“I think it’s great that the town is getting a new theatre, but I’m not happy with the height of it,” she said. “I think it’s going to look out of place at the landscape of our main street.”
Furthermore, she said, she hopes the new theatre doesn’t open the doors to larger developments in the downtown core.
Two years ago, she said, she spent a few days standing on Queen Street during tourist season and speaking with visitors, asking them where they’re from and what brings them to town.
The majority of them, she said, were from municipalities in the Greater Toronto Area that were once charming small towns like NOTL before they were “swallowed up” by development.
“They miss the feeling” of living in a small town, she said. “I don’t want that to happen to Niagara-on-the-Lake.”
