Not having a downtown never really bothered me when I moved here in 2003. I figured we never really needed one. I have lived in a lot of cities where downtown was 20 minutes or more from my home and I never wanted to live “downtown”. Living here, I actually enjoyed visiting Stayner, Elmvale and Collingwood’s downtowns a few times a year to wander around. (I still do.)

Everyone knows many downtowns in Canada were failing to the point of storefronts being boarded up and properties being abandoned. Several larger communities have even formed “Downtown Revitalization Strategies” in an attempt to save their core. If other communities were struggling to keep their downtowns alive, what was causing this failure in the first place? Well, many say it is because Walmart’s had appeared (usually on the edge of towns) and the “Downtown” Mom and Pop shops struggled leading to failure.

Even before Walmarts became a thing, shopping malls and large department stores drew people out of the core and tried to entice shoppers away from downtown.

But here in Wasaga Beach, a few of our politicians thought it was still viable to build a downtown in a neighbourhood where WallMart was already the anchor. Why embrace this as a political strategy?

Well, the why… you can still ask Brian Smith if it matters to you. I say it is all about real estate profits for friends and friends of friends. The bottom line is Mayor Brian Smith and 4 members of Council DID embrace this building a downtown as a strategy. But for those who are new here, or for those with selective memories, let’s look at some history, then we can talk about the future.

Ok… so Brian Smiths first failed Council spent thousands of hours and hundreds of thousands of dollars creating a “Downtown Master Plan”. Physically, it was a $300,000.00 big blue book. The plan (the book) was filled with statistics and reasoning that closely resembled another planned Wasaga Beach development called “Blue Beach” several years earlier. In fact, the authors paid to produce the DTMP were the same people who published the Blue Beach Plan.

Some people were surprised because they were expecting a Stayner or Collingwood style Main Street. Others were disappointed because they thought it was going to be a tourism block Main Street at Beach One. No, Brian had decided to go big and do it all.

The new plan was in my opinion, actually two things. First and foremost, it became an official planning document, filed as part of our Municipal framework at the County of Simcoe. The other thing it became ( and this was the most important) was a public hype tool.

Why do I refer to it as “hype”? The book was filled with unrealistic artist concepts that were not possible when considering scale. One of the main pie in the sky images in the book, became the towns signature image on signs and even on a billboard. This was accompanied by stories that a “boutique” hotel was close to committing. There was even hope that a Casino would be the centre of it all.

But, let’s back up a little bit. Everyone knows municipalities are not in the business of building downtowns. But Brian Smith knew he wanted to flip some big real estate. With NO prior election campaign mention, no council priority, absolutely NO business plan, Brian Smiths first Council handcuffed the Town by purchasing properties that meant the Town now owned 70% of Beach One. So…. We now HAD to do something.

One of Brian, Joe and Andrew’s favourite sayings these days is to put things in silos.

So, for today, we close by saying Silo 1 is the official plan. It is the official document that says we want to build our Downtown in a specific geographical area.

There are several silos… please be patient. Tomorrow, we will address the first development proposal for our “downtown” and why it initially failed. Not surprisingly, we are heading down a similar path in 2024, so understanding the past clearly is important.

To do so…. We NEED to recognize all Silos. They all matter but some people would prefer we not talk about them.