Thurs July 4: River District Precinct & Owen Sound Waterfront Reality Check
Plus: Local news on Owen Sound Attack, the tall ship Playfair, an arrest after Meaford break-ins – and a full slate of upcoming events
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As we continue the conversation around ways to improve Owen Sound for all, three interesting things have come across my desk in the last 24 hours.
First, the City is expanding downtown public washroom availability. More on that under “Public Notices.”
Second, there’s an interesting event happening at the Library tomorrow. Community builder and innovator Christy Hempel is back from six years spent in Denmark as a researcher and housing consultant. She will co-host a workshop and plenary session “to think and collaborate on different housing problems and themes, identifying local barriers and sharing opportunities,” she says.
Learn more:
And finally…
Can we get a fact check on Owen Sound Councilor Suneet Kukreja's recent CBC Morning interview, please?
Yesterday’s episode is described in this way:
“Owen Sound city council is investing money to improve business around the waterfront. Something Suneet Kukreja has been calling for since she took office in 2022.”
It’s as intriguing as it is confusing. Has one councillor finally moved the needle on Owen Sound’s 24-year-old master plan for the harbour? Let’s have a listen.
"Over the past few years, one of the biggest things that the City has been doing on a regular basis is organizing lots of events for tourism purposes on the waterfront.
These events include Summerfolk, which has been going on since the 70s and does attract a lot of crowds and tourists from all across Ontario.
The other one is the Salmon Spectacular, or the fishing derby, which again, we do see a huge rush in tourism around September.
Other than that, in the winter it's the Festival of Northern Lights and I think just recently, on the eve of the Canada Day weekend, we had a waterfront festival on Kelso running through Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday. That saw a lot of visitors and tourists from all across.
So these are some of the things the City has been participating in and has been trying to encourage people to come to the waterfront in Owen Sound."
When CBC host Nav Nanwa mentions that Kukreja ran on waterfront improvements as part of her election platform two years ago and asks why it's taking so long to "unlock the potential" of Owen Sound's harbour area, Kukreja responds:
"The main issue is the resources. The City of Owen Sound has a population of around 22,000. The needs are high, but the resources and the financial resources are… minimalistic, we would say.”
Kukreja goes on to say Owen Sound’s efforts to revamp the waterfront are “on track.” That it “wasn’t ignored, and it has always been a priority.”
When asked for the investment required for this, she tells the host it’s “anywhere from around five or six million dollars, and we’ve just spent two million dollars on Phase 2.”
When asked about the current state of Owen Sound’s harbour, Kukreja says it is “naturalized” with beautiful beaches and access to trails.
Confused? Me too.
The entire episode was like listening to someone talk about a different town altogether. Let’s start with costs.
The first phase of the Downtown River Precinct reconstruction work in 2019 took place along the 800 block of 1st Avenue East near city hall and cost $3 million.
Phase 2 has a total budget of $2 million. By the time the City got bids for Phase 2, contractors were coming in a million dollars over budget. They had to put it on hold and rejig the designs to bring the budget in line.
The only information I’ve been able to find on Phases 3 and 4 are cost estimates of $1.98 million and $2.2 million respectively, from the 2023 “budget book,” a glossy 422-page flipbook that’s painful to navigate if you actually need to, you know… find anything in the budget.
The City of Owen Sound has spent $5 million so far and is expected to spend at least $4 million more on the River District Precinct project, and those are old estimates.
This does not accurately encompass “waterfront” improvements, either. RDP Phases 3 and 4 will focus on redeveloping the west side of the Sydenham River, in the 800 and 900 blocks. It doesn’t include 1st Avenues East and West from 10th to 14th Sts.
Owen Sound’s waterfront extends down East Bayshore Road almost to Hibou on the east side, and past 29th St on the west side.
Then there’s just… all of this:
Summerfolk is not organized by the City. You can thank the Georgian Bay Folk Society and its hundreds of dedicated volunteers for its success.
The Salmon Spectacular is not organized by the City. That would be the Sydenham Sportsmen Association and their dedicated community members. Thank you to them, as well.
Owen Sound’s waterfront is not “naturalized,” which is a form of habitat restoration in which native plant species are restored. Far from it. Ours is a working harbour with a heavy industrial history.
Owen Sound’s harbour is federally owned. Most of the inner harbour, from the 10th Street bridge to approximately the Bayshore Community Centre, is owned by the Crown. Despite Transport Canada’s attempts to divest it since 2000, the city has not accepted. That’s because…
The Owen Sound harbour is seriously contaminated. According to a Saugeen Ojibway Nation and Trent University study from 2018, “The Owen Sound harbour is highly polluted with contaminant levels that pose a risk to fish, aquatic life and, potentially, humans who are exposed to its sediment.” This includes Kelso Beach. The feds and City cannot agree on who will foot the bill for any environmental remediation should Owen Sound get its wish that the harbour be dredged.
No sitting council member can take credit for “River District Precinct” improvements. The master plan driving this work was created in the year 2000. It’s nearly a quarter of a century old, as the City’s own RDP Phase 2 documentation says:
I remember when that master plan came out in 2000, with concept photos of families jaunting over footbridges in the inner harbour and parking their boats by Metro to pop up for dinner at their choice of waterfront restaurant.
It’s just not reality. Not yet, and maybe not ever. The Harbour and Downtown Urban Design master-plan-strategy-insert-corporate-buzzwords-here has moved at a snail’s pace.
Listen, I don’t want to be overly harsh on a first-term council member. But facts matter. Accuracy matters. The integrity of information matters. Representation matters.
The City of Owen Sound recently dropped $6,631.01 on a sponsored article in the National Post in which the Mayor regales a national audience with stories of our prowess in the isotopes supply chain.
Now we have an elected representative on national radio sharing a fairytale about major local events and projects, and the City’s investments in them.
Meanwhile, local media such as this publication are often ignored. In all the questions we’ve asked of Council since The Owen Sound Current launched in November 2023, five of your nine elected representatives have never responded to a single one.
That includes Councilor Suneet Kukreja.
Owen Sounders should be able to ask a straight question and get an honest answer from the people elected as our representatives. Moreover, we should be able to trust that the information being shared by elected officials about what’s happening at City Hall is factual, current, and complete.
We don’t need to reinvent Owen Sound for the rest of the world. Why would you do that? There’s definitely work to be done, but there are a lot of great things already happening in Owen Sound.
City Hall isn’t responsible for all of it, and no one expects them to be. Owen Sound is gifted with creative, talented people in every area, from sports and business to arts, culture, culinary, and the natural world.
We have the Georgian Bay Folk Society and the Sydenham Sportsmen with their iconic annual events. We have countless more events – dozens each month – including concerts, educational talks, walks and hikes, interesting guest speakers, bike rides, art classes and events, and a lot more.
These events are offered by service clubs, local businesses, churches, grassroots organizations, and other local people who care.
And yet two local entrepreneurs who’ve opened businesses in this term of Council have expressed to me their disappointment that despite being invited, no one from the City – staff or Council – bothered to attend their Grand Openings.
Entrepreneurs and developers have long complained that Owen Sound is an unfriendly place to do business; that red tape and bureaucracy impede progress and innovation.
But what’s happening now has become dangerous. Downtown business owners feel abandoned in what has become a powder keg of ongoing confrontation and hostility between themselves and people who openly smoke and shoot up drugs on the street, act predictably erratically, and scare away their customers. Another empty building. Another set of boarded-up windows.
Sharif Rahman was killed at his restaurant nearly a year ago, and those responsible simply ran away down mostly empty streets. Downtown has only declined further since then.
Event organizers and businesspeople are drawing locals and visitors into the community, only to have them subjected to verbal abuse, threats, intimidation, and indignities of all kinds.
And do we think people actually want to be left to wander the streets aimlessly, their best hope at a warm bed and a place to store their belongings being an emergency hotel room for a few nights? Of course not.
Owen Sound doesn’t need a small panel of heroes to save the town’s reputation. What good is the marketing schtick when people are literally dying on the street? Tourists and businesspeople interested in visiting and investing here will quickly figure out they’re in for the same experience the rest of us are having.
The best marketing is a good product.
Owen Sound needs and deserves a functioning council dedicated to representing all of the people of this community and improving our shared quality of life in measurable ways.
That means recognizing that City Hall is not an island unto itself. It means being open and accessible to your community. It means being facilitators, enablers, and amplifiers for good – and certainly not attempting to take credit for the magic others are making happen.
Let’s refocus on reality and what can actually be done here and now to improve Owen Sound. There’s plenty of good to discuss and share about what’s going on in our city without the need for slippery advertising and a manufactured narrative.
Now, back to our regularly scheduled programming.
Public Notices
The City has announced that in response to the growing need for public washrooms with 24/7 access, the washroom at the Owen Sound Police Services building on 2nd Avenue West is now available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. (City of Owen Sound)
The Township of Georgian Bluffs is now accepting photos for its 2025 Community Calendar. (Georgian Bluffs)
Reminder: We ran a community poll yesterday on Owen Sound’s ‘Vision 2050’ project. You can still weigh in here.
~ Miranda
P.S. Don’t forget to visit and bookmark OwenSoundCurrent.com. Full subscribers can access local events listings and our entire archive of content on the website.
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