David Israelson
Special to Niagara Now/The Lake Report

What timing. Niagara-on-the-Lake’s town council picked the week that Joni Mitchell was receiving a lifetime achievement Juno Award to make her words become real.

They voted to pave paradise and put up a parking lot. 

Well, maybe paradise is an exaggerated description of NOTL’s former hospital site at 176 Wellington St. But the property did offer some attractive opportunities to make the community a better place to live, work and visit.

Never mind. What can be more attractive than a parking garage at the entrance to an historic town?

Apparently that was the council’s thinking on March 24, when it rejected a simple proposal that would have allowed philanthropists, educators, arts, music, cultural and Indigenous organizations to formally put forward ideas for using the property for more than just dumping your car.

Instead, council ordered staff to look only at one idea: parking. 

Never mind that community stuff. Why waste time with peoples’ ideas? We can only imagine the day, a few years from now, when a future lord mayor dedicates the new parking lot: “People tried to suggest other uses for the community, but we showed them. Time to park.”

Town staff now have firm direction. They have been instructed to spend up to $200,000 of taxpayers’ money to look at how to make this public land in Niagara-on-the-Lake into a daycare for peoples’ cars.

No doubt a design team (or maybe its AI helpers) will come up with some attractive drawings. But actual buildings have a funny way of not looking exactly like the architectural renderings that were presented before they were built. 

What will the footprint of this giant parking lot be on the site? What happens to the trees in front and to the side of the existing building?

Put ‘em in a tree museum? 

In any case, have you ever seen a parking lot, anywhere, and said, “My, what a beautiful building?” Thought so. 

According to early estimates, it could cost up to $18 million to build this parking palace. Not to worry: within one or two decades, the parking fees might start paying back the investment. 

Or not. The parking lot could be in the black as long as there aren’t additional salaries and expenses to manage it, provide security and maintain the place when the pavement and the pillars get worn down between now and the 2040s. 

Some members of council apparently believe that their vote ordering staff to do a parking lot study still leaves the door open to other ideas for the property. It’s about “timing,” they say. 

This may come as news to the James A. Burton & Family Foundation, which wants to donate substantial funds to help establish 176 Wellington as a hub for some of the arts and cultural activities that make this town vibrant and a great place to live. 

The foundation says its concept would include parking, which could provide revenue for the town. While parking would be part of the project, it wouldn’t dominate the property the way the town’s proposed parking lot would. 

The foundation can be forgiven if they take the town’s vote to look at only one option — parking — at face value. Council’s argument is that it’s just not ready yet to entertain other imaginative ideas for the site. But it’s hard to see how a vote ordering only one option to be considered can be called keeping your options open.

Will NOTL’s council ever be ready to consider other options for this public property? Based on what we’ve seen so far, you don’t what you’ve got till it’s gone. 

David Israelson is a writer and non-practising lawyer who lives in Niagara-on-the-Lake.