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Precarious Balance in Muskoka – Speculators changing regional character
- for more of what is unwarranted expansion
The rest of us holding on for dear life –
I take accountability as religion. I’ve never had a problem accepting a personal or professional shortfall. If I’ve made an error or caused even a minute part of a problem or unfortunate situation, I fess up as soon as I’ve been made aware of my part in the debacle. I’m not Muskoka’s best citizen, but then I’m not its biggest folly either…..although this is open to debate. I just have a conscience that commands confession. I can’t live with myself if I’ve done a disservice, in house or community. And yes it’s also true, I’ve offered a lot of apologies over the decades, for stuff I probably didn’t even do. That makes up for things I did do….but probably shouldn’t have….and simply didn’t get found-out. As a widely published editorialist since the late 1970’s, it’s one area that has always been non-negotiable…..if I deserve blame and or it’s proven to me I should make restitution, correction or otherwise, there won’t be any question about my making amends. In print. In person. Just cause it’s the right thing to do and it’s a grand feeling to be entirely human……hopefully a decent human being, admitting openly and honestly we may have goofed up.
What I long to hear in our Muskoka region, is an elected official admit their leadership may have “sucked” in the past; their wisdom and insightfulness being somewhat less than what the community really needed in the area of good and responsible governance.
There are many urban development documents and good planning reference texts available to municipal politicians, investigating the negative aspects of urban sprawl and the contentious issue of establishing commercial pods all over God’s half acre, in small communities all over North America. They’ve all had access to this information and certainly they seem at times intelligent enough to understand the material. Yet they lend their resources to developers who know full well what happens when you take a small community and test its economic elasticity. In Bracebridge, in particular, the pod influences and impact on the main street will brutally manifest itself in the coming years for a number of reasons that were all known…..all discussed before approvals were granted to expand all over the place, without a clear town centre in this new century. What the town officials have guaranteed is that there will be an economic adjustment that will border on catastrophe……but they’ll by tradition, take no responsibility for their failures……..only the good stuff is worth recognizing.
The main street of Bracebridge is my old stomping ground and I love it dearly even now after living many years in Gravenhurst. The old buildings are expensive to maintain and often cost inefficient to rent out and still make a profit. I imagine that many insurance companies are researching carefully the fires in Wasaga Beach and Barrie where old commercial businesses were razed this year by large urban fires. As editor of The Herald-Gazette in the early 1980’s, I watched a huge chunk of urban landscape destroyed by fire, when the Thomas Block went up in flames one bitterly cold January day. While this was rebuilt with all the benefit of current safety inclusions to prevent the spread of building to building fire in the future, the main street is still composed of higher risk architecture; connected buildings, many without the firewall installations……..requirements proven effective today in curtailing the spread of fire building to building To make the mainstreets of our Muskoka communities vibrant isn’t as difficult as dealing with the overall problems of seriously aging structures, the need for widespread restorations, and cost efficiency all round. Check the ice build up on roof-lines on main street buildings in our historic mainstreet business sites. Then check out the same on new commercial buildings and box stores and you’ll see that the builders have factored in energy efficiency into their business designs. So what can really help the mainstreets?
The only way to save the downtown areas, the traditional main streets, is for massive urban renewal to be fostered by respective communities. This has happened in Gravenhurst most recently where old homes in serious decline were removed and replaced by a new building and a new commercial tenant. While some have complained bitterly about the historic character and charm of the main street being altered by this contemporary architecture, the fact is that it has guaranteed a critical new dynamic to the main business corridor at a time when the development of commercial nodes threatens to beat local commercial tradition into oblivion.
Municipal councilors need to take a serious look at this outward expansion and node development and how it will affect the future character of the communities. They must show goodwill toward the main street because it is where the town began…..and where it will die, if by ignorance, they leave it to falter in the wake of giant corporations and developers streaming past, who couldn’t care less about community heritage and that old-time sense of neighborhood well-being. If mainstreet commerce died in each of our communities, do you think the commercial nodes would feel a sense of loss……versus a chipper feeling that there’s less competition for the local dollar.
I’ve been a Muskoka historian for a long time and I’ve apprenticed with some of the best known historical types in our region from the 1970’s to the present, and I don’t have even the slightest doubt, that if this node expansion we have been witnessing as of late, is followed up by recessionary times in this province…..we will see a truly unfortunate tumble of local businesses from the traditional downtown centres,….forced into last ditch re-location to nodes….. or thrust unceremoniously into bankruptcies and closures up and down the street.
If you add onto this the statistics about tourism shortfalls and there shouldn’t be a councilor anywhere in this district…….not pondering what a further decline in our number one industry will mean for our economic future. Every councilor should want to know who are buying speculaltion condos and houses here……are they investors or are these to be family owned? Are we a retirement mecca…..do we know the average age of new home buyers in our communities? Are councilors giving any consideration to the fact we have serious limitations in retirement and nursing home beds, hospital beds and medical professionals? Is it wise to be developing Muskoka’s residential capacity with little consideration to the possibility we are stressing our resources too thinly for a safe and accommodating future?
I would like councilors to discuss these issues in public so that we can judge their grasp of the situation. Down the line a few years I have a feeling that these same councilors will be glad-handing all over the place for re-election and will take full credit for every perceived advancement and improvement, but will right-off failings as “the cost of progress.”
I feel the main streets have been badly short changed by those politicians who have fully supported the pod sprawl into the Muskoka countryside. An economic downturn in both real estate, public confidence and spending, will have a deep and profound effect on our respective town characteristics……and in this case, where decisions have been made with full appreciation of good advice to the contrary, well, me thinks there will be a few consciences disturbed amongst the progressives……who may feel some responsibility for shamelessly facilitating the over-retailing and over development of our modestly populated region of rural Ontario.
Heck I feel bad because for all my published critiques, I still couldn’t change the opinion of even one elected official…….to take the side of sensible proportion and loyalty to town heritage. I want to say that “they will live to regret their liberalities,” yet I’m more confident than ever, they will refuse to accept responsibility for the mess they create…….and as we have come to expect, continue to recognize what they see as positive, while washing their hands of the negatives. I do feel sorry for them in many ways, because enlightenment is such a liberating way to live life.
I do not feel we are being governed by “the enlightened,”……rather, I fear we are being led by the naïve, toward a very uncertain, precarious future in the region we call home.
- for more of what is unwarranted expansion
The rest of us holding on for dear life –
I take accountability as religion. I’ve never had a problem accepting a personal or professional shortfall. If I’ve made an error or caused even a minute part of a problem or unfortunate situation, I fess up as soon as I’ve been made aware of my part in the debacle. I’m not Muskoka’s best citizen, but then I’m not its biggest folly either…..although this is open to debate. I just have a conscience that commands confession. I can’t live with myself if I’ve done a disservice, in house or community. And yes it’s also true, I’ve offered a lot of apologies over the decades, for stuff I probably didn’t even do. That makes up for things I did do….but probably shouldn’t have….and simply didn’t get found-out. As a widely published editorialist since the late 1970’s, it’s one area that has always been non-negotiable…..if I deserve blame and or it’s proven to me I should make restitution, correction or otherwise, there won’t be any question about my making amends. In print. In person. Just cause it’s the right thing to do and it’s a grand feeling to be entirely human……hopefully a decent human being, admitting openly and honestly we may have goofed up.
What I long to hear in our Muskoka region, is an elected official admit their leadership may have “sucked” in the past; their wisdom and insightfulness being somewhat less than what the community really needed in the area of good and responsible governance.
There are many urban development documents and good planning reference texts available to municipal politicians, investigating the negative aspects of urban sprawl and the contentious issue of establishing commercial pods all over God’s half acre, in small communities all over North America. They’ve all had access to this information and certainly they seem at times intelligent enough to understand the material. Yet they lend their resources to developers who know full well what happens when you take a small community and test its economic elasticity. In Bracebridge, in particular, the pod influences and impact on the main street will brutally manifest itself in the coming years for a number of reasons that were all known…..all discussed before approvals were granted to expand all over the place, without a clear town centre in this new century. What the town officials have guaranteed is that there will be an economic adjustment that will border on catastrophe……but they’ll by tradition, take no responsibility for their failures……..only the good stuff is worth recognizing.
The main street of Bracebridge is my old stomping ground and I love it dearly even now after living many years in Gravenhurst. The old buildings are expensive to maintain and often cost inefficient to rent out and still make a profit. I imagine that many insurance companies are researching carefully the fires in Wasaga Beach and Barrie where old commercial businesses were razed this year by large urban fires. As editor of The Herald-Gazette in the early 1980’s, I watched a huge chunk of urban landscape destroyed by fire, when the Thomas Block went up in flames one bitterly cold January day. While this was rebuilt with all the benefit of current safety inclusions to prevent the spread of building to building fire in the future, the main street is still composed of higher risk architecture; connected buildings, many without the firewall installations……..requirements proven effective today in curtailing the spread of fire building to building To make the mainstreets of our Muskoka communities vibrant isn’t as difficult as dealing with the overall problems of seriously aging structures, the need for widespread restorations, and cost efficiency all round. Check the ice build up on roof-lines on main street buildings in our historic mainstreet business sites. Then check out the same on new commercial buildings and box stores and you’ll see that the builders have factored in energy efficiency into their business designs. So what can really help the mainstreets?
The only way to save the downtown areas, the traditional main streets, is for massive urban renewal to be fostered by respective communities. This has happened in Gravenhurst most recently where old homes in serious decline were removed and replaced by a new building and a new commercial tenant. While some have complained bitterly about the historic character and charm of the main street being altered by this contemporary architecture, the fact is that it has guaranteed a critical new dynamic to the main business corridor at a time when the development of commercial nodes threatens to beat local commercial tradition into oblivion.
Municipal councilors need to take a serious look at this outward expansion and node development and how it will affect the future character of the communities. They must show goodwill toward the main street because it is where the town began…..and where it will die, if by ignorance, they leave it to falter in the wake of giant corporations and developers streaming past, who couldn’t care less about community heritage and that old-time sense of neighborhood well-being. If mainstreet commerce died in each of our communities, do you think the commercial nodes would feel a sense of loss……versus a chipper feeling that there’s less competition for the local dollar.
I’ve been a Muskoka historian for a long time and I’ve apprenticed with some of the best known historical types in our region from the 1970’s to the present, and I don’t have even the slightest doubt, that if this node expansion we have been witnessing as of late, is followed up by recessionary times in this province…..we will see a truly unfortunate tumble of local businesses from the traditional downtown centres,….forced into last ditch re-location to nodes….. or thrust unceremoniously into bankruptcies and closures up and down the street.
If you add onto this the statistics about tourism shortfalls and there shouldn’t be a councilor anywhere in this district…….not pondering what a further decline in our number one industry will mean for our economic future. Every councilor should want to know who are buying speculaltion condos and houses here……are they investors or are these to be family owned? Are we a retirement mecca…..do we know the average age of new home buyers in our communities? Are councilors giving any consideration to the fact we have serious limitations in retirement and nursing home beds, hospital beds and medical professionals? Is it wise to be developing Muskoka’s residential capacity with little consideration to the possibility we are stressing our resources too thinly for a safe and accommodating future?
I would like councilors to discuss these issues in public so that we can judge their grasp of the situation. Down the line a few years I have a feeling that these same councilors will be glad-handing all over the place for re-election and will take full credit for every perceived advancement and improvement, but will right-off failings as “the cost of progress.”
I feel the main streets have been badly short changed by those politicians who have fully supported the pod sprawl into the Muskoka countryside. An economic downturn in both real estate, public confidence and spending, will have a deep and profound effect on our respective town characteristics……and in this case, where decisions have been made with full appreciation of good advice to the contrary, well, me thinks there will be a few consciences disturbed amongst the progressives……who may feel some responsibility for shamelessly facilitating the over-retailing and over development of our modestly populated region of rural Ontario.
Heck I feel bad because for all my published critiques, I still couldn’t change the opinion of even one elected official…….to take the side of sensible proportion and loyalty to town heritage. I want to say that “they will live to regret their liberalities,” yet I’m more confident than ever, they will refuse to accept responsibility for the mess they create…….and as we have come to expect, continue to recognize what they see as positive, while washing their hands of the negatives. I do feel sorry for them in many ways, because enlightenment is such a liberating way to live life.
I do not feel we are being governed by “the enlightened,”……rather, I fear we are being led by the naïve, toward a very uncertain, precarious future in the region we call home.
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