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Searching for purpose
Shire Hall has a property problem. It has too much. Way too much. Worse, when the municipality acquires a property— or finds one it didn’t know it had—it is nigh impossible to dispose of it. So the portfolio of obscure and decaying assets grows. Unchecked.
It’s been more than a decade since there was a proper count. Then it was estimated that Shire Hall owned 88 buildings and 120 bits of land. That’s a lot for a wee rural municipality of 25,000 folks. Plenty of legitimate property development companies don’t own this much real estate.
I wish I could report this property assembly is deliberate, rational and prudent. It is none of these things. Rather, it is a peculiar bit of institutional hoarding. Once an old gravel pit, work shed or leftover patch of ground is rendered useless, Council seems powerless to dispose of it. Of course, useless in this context, for some, merely suggests a lack of imagination or the stirring of a fond memory of what used to be.
If Shire Hall were a person, it might get help. Instead, the County’s collection of property expands without reflection. Property in search of a purpose. It turns out Council is adept at finding necessity in stuff it didn’t know it had.
This brings us to a patch of ground in Consecon. Bounded by the Loyalist Highway, Millennium Trail and Lakeside Drive. Its only notable feature is the former grain elevator perched beside the former railway line.
Last year, Shire Hall proposed selling it and a handful of other forgotten bits of property. Cue the revolt. Last week a clutch of councillors led by Roy Pennell formally laid out their ambition to reclaim the land for the people and to inject a fresh purpose upon this bit of empty lot.
While this patch of ground already serves as a rest stop for users of the Millennium Trail, it is, according to the resolution tabled last week, underused. How does one enhance the utility of a rest stop? Build a parkette, that’s how. Doing so may “stimulate the local economy, showcase Ameliasburgh, and provide a place residents and visitors can enjoy in the northern part of The County.”
Consecon can seem a hamlet that time forgot. A fateful decision made decades ago to reroute the highway around the village has served to lock the village in a moment. Since then, investment mostly whizzes past on the Loyalist Parkway headed for the beach, or Picton or Wellington. The sealed-in-amber quality of the place is both part of its charm and its sense of being left behind.
It explains, too, Council’s deference to things Consecon. There is no good found in rousing such simmering grievance.
And to be clear, this column has no wish to deny Conseconers a parkette—but this way of doing things just seems, well, random. For more mature readers, random in today’s parlance infers ill-considered and bad precedent. A nail in search of a hammer.
How do we know Conseconers are looking for a showcase in the northern part of the County? Has the yearning for a municipal green space along the highway been documented? Measured? Do we have any assurances that a parkette will be used more than a rest stop? Will it really stimulate the local economy? Who will maintain it? What cost?
It is not as though we don’t have experience fumbling the disposal of municipal property. Despite investing a truckload of money into the Picton Library to expand public meeting space in the town a few years ago, Council decided it couldn’t part with the former town hall. The fire department had moved to new quarters (indeed part of the financing of the new fire hall relied upon selling this property) while the upper floor was occasionally used as meeting space.
Various schemes were tried to inject purpose into the building and generate revenue with which to salvage and maintain the old structure. None of it worked. So it gets older, underused and more needy with each passing year.
Bruised by experience, successive Councils are reluctant to make adult decisions about these properties. Such proposals inevitably produce a handful of folks Council has never seen before declaring a travesty in their midst.
Set aside the upkeep cost, and the narrow self-interest— consider the opportunity cost. What if, say, in the hands of private owners the Picton town hall or future Consecon parkette were transformed into housing? Creating homes for folks to live? Generating fees and taxes? Forever.
Purpose may be found looking forward and back.
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