The property was put up for sale and that sent chills down the spines of some who talked about the downtown core losing one of its prime attractions. Marianne Meed Ward , council member for the community, has said that people feel the location is “vital to the city” but no one really goes there to spend real dollars.
When news that the property might be sold broke, city council moved quickly to do the background work needed to prepare the properties for historical designation. They are currently on the city’s registry of historically significant properties. Heritage Burlington, the city’s advisory board on heritage issues, was asked to prepare a report on the three buildings that have historical significance.
The second draft of those reports is in the hands of the advisory group but they aren’t happy with what they have paid for. Randy McLaughlin, a member of the advisory committee, felt what the committee was given was just a lot of ‘cut and paste stuff’. “We need better information in order to get our report to a city council committee” he said at a recent advisory committee meeting.
Jim Clemens, chair of Heritage Burlington, close to the best Advisory Committee the city has, has worked with his team and manged some tricky issues rather well. He did get hornswoggled on going into a Closed Session.
At that same Heritage Burlington Advisory committee, Meed Ward said she wanted to talk about the situation with the Village Square but wasn’t prepared to do so in public and suggested the committee go into closed session – which they did. This is an unusual step for an advisory committee, and committee chair Jim Clemens wasn’t certain about the procedure and didn’t realize then that he should have cautioned the members of the committee as to just what a Closed Session meant– but nevertheless, into closed session they went.
The rules of the Closed Session game are that what is talked about in the room – stays in the room.
Media was required to leave, which we did. By 9:00 am, the following day Our Burlington got three different emails from people who were not in the room telling us who the developer was. So much for confidentiality.
We were of course delighted and we wrote up our story and then met with the developer who wasn’t quick to admit they were in discussions.
Prior to meeting with the developer we received yet another email advising that any deal was off the table. That isn’t completely true. It is true to say that at this point in time there is no deal – but these things take time.
