TIMMINS - Ten parks have been saved from being sold. For now.
At the Nov. 26 Timmins council meeting, members deferred a vote to sell parkland space to make way for development, or offload the property so it doesn't have to be maintained by city staff.
Not interested in approving a bundle of properties, council wants to see each property as a separate request and have more details on why the park was chosen. They also want to know how much of the city's parkland inventory the suggested parks represent and the minimum anticipated revenue from selling the lots.
The 10 parks affected are Dwyer Avenue Park, Graham Lane Park, Randall Drive Park, Timcor Park on Gatineau Boulevard, Antonio Gauthier Park on Hudson Crescent, Crawford Street, Simone Court Park, Frontenac Park, Nadine Avenue Park, and Florence Street.
Even if it's not a "full-fledged park", Coun. Steve Black's hesitant to sell neighbourhood spaces. While he was to find land to develop for housing, he's not in favour if it being parkland.
"What may not seem valuable to us as vacant land, as long as the grass is cut, can be quite valuable to children of neighbourhoods and families of neighbourhoods to allow their kids to go out and play tag or take a ball around, or whatever the case may be, some of these make sense to me," he said.
The item at the meeting was to declare the spaces surplus land. That triggers a public commenting period, with the items posted on the city website and in the newspaper.
Having been through the process of talking about selling parkland in previous terms on council, Black wants more in-depth community consultation.
"I think if you look at the circumstances in our largest park in the community, the smaller, more regional, close to home parks are going to be considered more valuable to residential neighbourhoods as we can address locations with bigger parks," he said.
For the Schumacher park on the list, Coun. Bill Gvozdanvic said the city should contact Newmont Porcupine.
"There's three ... big manholes where they go in once a month and they test for ground movement," he said, adding "if somebody creates a house there, you might end up in a 900-foot basement watching the game."
Building new housing is one of the priorities for the city.
To find areas for that, director of growth and infrastructure Scott Tam said city departments have been reviewing properties.
The lots presented on Tuesday, he said, are the "first stab" at finding city-owned properties for housing.
"If you look at the pictures in the reports, you'll see that most of these parks are either slapped on lots that were part of a plan of subdivision and they were kind of haphazardly created or they're on properties that can be easily divided into residential lots, which accomplished a significant need that have been identified by council, which is why they were chosen," explained clerk Steph Palmateer.
For the parks up for discussion, he said they are also close to existing parks in their neighbourhood.
"Any resources right now we're spreading resources over ... I believe it's 84 parks across the City of Timmins. So if we were to generate some revenue, eliminate some parks to be able to dedicate those same resources to fewer parks and have an enhancement of that service. That is the plan," he said.
The Florence Street park in Porcupine is not near another park. While it was an space opening onto Bristol Road at one point, a house was later built and separated the play structure from the road.
Coun. John Curley noted the playground equipment was removed.
"Yet we're saying that is close to other parks, but there is none. There's no road there, there's no services, there's no nothing. Yet it's part of this," he said.
The parks in the report, and staff recommendations are:
- Dwyer Avenue Park - Close the park and sell it through a public tender process.
- Graham Lane Park - Close the park and create four residential lots to sell through the public tender process. The city's intent is to develop semi-detached dwellings.
- Randall Park - Relocate the playground equipment to the north lot and sell the south lot through the public tender process.
- Timcor Park on Gatineau Boulevard - Close a portion of the park west of the walking trail that front onto Gatineau to create six to seven residential lots to sell through the public tender process. The playground equipment would be moved to the remaining portion of the park, and a six-metre walking trail would be kept on the east side of the property.
- Antonio Gauthier Park on Hudson Crescent - Close the park and create nine residential lots to sell through the public tender process.
- Crawford Street - Declare a 33.09 property, which houses playground equipment at the end of Moore Street, surplus to allow for a future subdivision development through a request for proposal process.
- Simone Court - Declare the property surplus lands and create five residential lots through the public tender process.
- Frontenac Park - Close the park and offer to sell it through direct land sale process to abutting property owners.
- Nadine Avenue Park - Close the park and offer to sell it to abutting property owners on Nadine. The trail providing access to Tim Hortons can be relocated between 183 and 197 Nadine.
- Florence Street - Offer to sell the properties to abutting property owners.
