Dear Fellow Residents
As you know may know Town staff have held public consultations and worked with external consultants over the last 18 months on a Downtown Cultural Hub Development plan. The Town Staff has now presented three final options for the Downtown Cultural Hub development and is seeking public input on the plans before they go to Council this fall. This link takes you to a comprehensive look at the options and the history of the consultation. (http://www.oakville.ca/townhall/downtown-cultural-hub.html. If you have not had an opportunity to familiarizes yourself with the options you should pause and take a few minutes to review them and the Parking garage report. http://www.oakville.ca/assets/general%20-%20town%20hall/dtplan-parking-garagestudy.pdf
JCRA has developed the Survey which you can locate through this link ( insert) in order to get your input on key issues related to the Downtown Cultural Hub plans, a possible new parking garage and our first ever South East Community Recreation Centre.
We hope you will participate in the Survey, which should take no more than 10 minutes of your time.
Background;
JCRA provided our members and the Town with a position paper in June of 2014 to assist in the development of the options. https://joshuacreek.org/key-issues/downtown/cultural-hub
The new Downtown Cultural Hub options address many of our suggestions but they have now presented differences that are cause for greater conversation and consultation.
Here is a brief summary of those changes:
1) There is only one option provided that disperses the cultural facilities across downtown and that option includes 4 residential 8 storey buildings on the public creek facing lands at Navy and Randall where the current Performing Arts Centre is and the Fire hall. These lands would be sold for residential development with one possibly for mixed use. This is identified as the New Build option.
2) The Town has not presented an option that has residential on top of public facilities rather than selling public creek facing land or an option for a hotel.
3) In the dispersed model the library moves away Centennial Square at (Lakeshore / Navy ) to the Post office site (George and Church).
4) The cost of the project once estimated at 120 million is now between 140-207 million depending on the option chosen.
5) Increased parking capacity is not clearly identified.
There is no proposed timeline that stages the build which makes it difficult to determine the annual capital commitment, potential tax implications or when we can anticipate changes.
The Town has commented that they have an 80 million annual capital budget or 800 million over a 10 year period. Some of those funds are already earmarked for infrastructure projects and other community projects including the Southeast Oakville Community Recreation Centre.
It is JCRA’s view that the Community Recreation Centre for Southeast Oakville is a top priority in keeping with fair geographical distribution of community services and our community needs. . The funding and timing of the Community Recreation Centre will be decided in Oct. Town Council will receive a report on the Downtown Options this fall and we want to know your views. We continue to support the importance of a vibrant Downtown for ALL of Oakville
This survey is confidential but the combined results will assist us in championing the needs of our community with Town Council. If you provide us with text comments please note they may be used in summarizing the results. 2 other Resident Associations in Southeast Oakville are participating and we hope you will share the survey link with your neighbours to get maximum participation.
If you have questions regarding the survey you can email us at memberjoshuacreek@gmail.com
(This is a confidential survey)
Survey Link: CLICK HERE (Survey Monkey Link)
The survey will remain open until Sept 16 midnight.
Thank you for your input and have a great September,
The JCRA Executive