Demolition by neglect?

Heritage committee raises concerns about the state of former convenience store

Winter is coming, and the season for construction work is dwindling. This fact is made acute to residents and visitors to Wellington, all of whom inevitably pass by the vacant buildings on the northwest corner of Main and Wharf Streets, at the village’s only traffic light and its commercial centre.

As Wellington’s popularity as a tourism destination continued to grow over the summer, members of the Wellington and District Business Association did their best to keep a good face on the empty storefronts that used to house Rock’n Rogers and Village Variety.

But now the season is over, and so is yet another chance for the County to rehabilitate Lane Creek, including installing a culvert under the building it purchased more than a year ago.

Public consultations last year made it clear it was the community’s will to maintain a structure on the corner at the very least, and ideally to keep the current building standing. And although it is not a designated heritage building, its age and its value to Main Street’s streetscape has drawn the attention of the Prince Edward Heritage Advisory Committee (PEHAC).

Last week, PEHAC discussed the building, wondering why no work had been done nor decisions made about the fate of the building.

“It needs to be maintained inside, otherwise it begins to fall apart,” says PEHAC vice-chair Ted Longley. “Then the County becomes no better than demolition by neglect.”

The issues all began with Lane Creek, a stream that flows into Wellington from its northeast end, passing under buildings and through culverts on Wharf and Main Streets, eventually flowing into Lake Ontario through the Drake Devonshire property.

In 2011, a regular inspection of a culvert that runs across Wharf Street indicated a need for remedial work beneath the convenience store. In 2013, staff proposed rerouting the creek under the intersection of Wharf and Main, bypassing privately owned buildings and renewing the life of the culvert.

That proposal met resistance from the public, who worried about disruption to Main Street, environmental impacts and the cost.

So the County came up with a different solution. In a closed session on June 9, 2015, council decided to buy 282 and 284 Wellington Main Street for $620,000, based on a proposal by the community development department. The proposal suggested tearing down the buildings and allowing the creek to run in its natural path. This course of action, the County later reported, would shave $200,000 off the cost of rerouting the stream.

Instead of a building, the corner would feature a park or a parking lot, the County suggested in a press release early last summer.

That prospect was met with widespread outrage. Nearly the entire community agreed the corner was a mainstay of the village’s downtown, and needed to remain intact, or at least be replaced by a similar structure.

In two public meetings that followed, the County agreed to put the project off for a year while a new solution was determined. Work was to commence in the summer of 2016.

Neil Carbone, the County’s community development manager, says while the County is trying to move forward, they have been delayed by an engineering assessment of the site. The County had hired an engineering firm to look at some options, their cost and how likely they were to be executed successfully.

The draft feasibility study was returned to the County last week. Carbone says the County will review it to ensure the information is correct before releasing it to the public. Once it is released, the County will hold another public meeting, this time with concrete information to work with, to decide how to proceed. He says that should happen soon.

In the meantime, Carbone says the building can still be heated, although the County’s physical properties staff haven’t confirmed they will continue to take care of the building.

“We’ve confirmed that we have the ability to heat the building,” says Carbone. “I’m waiting on feedback from engineering before determining where and to what extent we will do so… given that a decision about the property will likely not be made prior to winter.”

Longley hopes that’s the case.

“It needs to be maintained so that we don’t get into what happened with the Royal,” says Longley. “If the County owns the building and they have plans, and they haven’t been able to make up their mind yet for whatever reason, that’s a separate issue… If I had a $600,000 home and I was going away for a year, I’d have someone look in on it.”