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Cleaning up
As our reluctant (see page 3) columnist Roger Varley pointed out recently, there is too much of a disparity in the appearance of our downtown. On the one hand, you have superb corporate citizens like the Josellas (see page 7) or the good people at Edward Jones (see page 15) who take a ramshackle on nondescript property and turn it into a gem (it shouldn’t surprise you, by the way, that the landlords in the Edward Jones case are Cathy and Mark Christoff, who supported the ambitious project every step of the way).
On the other hand, you have the landlords of places like the old Cookhouse and Double H Cleaners, who have made no effort to clean up their long-abandoned properties and have seemingly no compunction about allowing them to be blots on Brock Street for the foreseeable future. But why should they be allowed to be so irresponsible? It is hardly fair for the efforts of the conscientious property owners to be so thoroughly undermined by the malignant neglect of the others.
It should be a privilege to own a building on Uxbridge’s principal commercial thoroughfare. If it doesn’t already have the power to force these unthinking landlords to improve their properties, Uxbridge Council should take aggressive action to create that power. Jennifer Carroll’s dream (page 16) of Uxbridge becoming another Stratford will never happen, even in 60 years, unless Council begins now to force all landlords to buy into the vision. Cooperate or get out. Uxbridge doesn’t need you, in fact it needs the very opposite of you. So unless you’re prepared to spruce up your property within eight months, here’s what we’re prepared to offer you. Take it, or we’ll expropriate for even less, as we would for any development leading to the common good (why is a downtown revitalization any different than a highway or hospital?).
This malignant neglect of highly visible properties doesn’t just apply on Brock Street; there are examples on just about every principal artery in the Township. The eyesore just south of the sewage treatment plant is one example. The entrance to the Glens, the development behind Shobrook Gardens, is another. Toronto Street South is a principal entrance into Uxbridge; why is the developer of the Glens allowed to leave the entrance as ugly as if he just finished construction yesterday? It makes no sense.
And how long will we wait for the mess at the old Co-op site to keep rusting and stewing before we force the landowner (still presumably First Leaside) to tear it down and take it away? The giant parking lot beside Firebridge may eventually serve some purpose, perhaps, but the skeleton on Victoria Drive only serves to remind us of bad things, and raises the wrong questions in the mind of any newcomer.
Why can’t we have some standards of beauty included in our planning and building codes? Beauty is subjective, some will reply, but surely by any gauge, the examples we’ve cited above are plug ugly, and getting uglier by the minute. We say, give these landlords until April to clean up their act. If they don’t, let’s give the Township a spring cleaning like it’s never seen before.
July 14, 2011
