CollingwoodToday welcomes letters to the editor at [email protected] or via the website. Please include your full name, daytime phone number and address (for verification of authorship, not publication). The following letter was sent in response to a recent article about the ongoing development plans for the former Terminals site.
Beth Turner in her letter is absolutely correct.
In a town of 25,000 or so that is struggling to provide its residents with an adequate water plant, a recreation facility, decent roads, a modern hospital, a performing arts centre and employee housing, why is participation in the Terminals project even being contemplated by its municipal government?
This public land is suited very well to its current use as a public park and does not need to be developed as a very complex hotel/condo/restaurant mixed-use facility. We have lots of those already.
And we certainly don’t need to have our local government “partnering” with a developer with our money and property – there are plenty of regulatory concerns on its plate that are challenging enough. Town council and staff are not real estate developers and if this project proceeds there is only one thing for sure – it will not end well.
If anyone has ever been involved in a major project that didn’t end up costing at least twice as much and taking at least twice as long as planned to complete, please put up your hand.
I know I haven’t and I’ve been involved in plenty. And, as we all know, you can double or triple that likely outcome where governments are the owners/managers.
Leave this area as a park, and get on with fixing our water, roads, healthcare, recreational and public entertainment facilities for which we pay plenty of taxes to have and are not being provided.
Been to Wasaga Beach lately? Like their nice new arena? Even a Casino generating over $1 million a year that could have been here?
James Parsons
Collingwood, Ont.
