The following letter was sent to Lord Mayor Gary Zalepa and members of town council. A copy was forwarded to The Lake Report for publication.

If we are considering a major construction project on the old hospital on Wellington Street, it would be pertinent to look at restructuring that end of Queen Street (Picton).

It would be much better to build a 450-car parking garage on King Street just above Byron Street, taking part of Simcoe Park. A three-storey with one storey underground and with a similar facade to the current 1812 look of the town — basically, to hide the “look” of the garage.

Simcoe Park could be remodelled to bring some of the statues and monuments forward closer to Queen (Picton) Street. People visiting Old Town, in my opinion, would not walk the extra distance from a parking garage at Wellington Street.

If a garage was built on Wellington Street, it typically would be used as overflow from the Shaw Festival theatre patrons.

As a further enhancement to Old Town, we could extend 1812-style stores along Picton Street opposite the Prince of Wales Hotel to extend to the St Vincent de Paul Church.

Simcoe Park would have access from the four corners at Queen and King and the north side. This would enable discussion on the old Wellington Street hospital to centre around other uses along with some overflow parking from Shaw.

This would give the town more parking related revenue, reduce on street parking behind Queen Street and effectively reduce overall congestion.

But these are just my thoughts for possible discussion.

Malcolm Newton
NOTL