Blyth BIA reacts to master plan

BY DENNY SCOTT

The Blyth Business Improvement Area (BIA) executive discussed the recently-received North Huron Parks Recreation and Culture Master Plan at length during the group’s recent meeting.

The plan, which was presented to North Huron Council earlier this month, proved divisive within the community with suggestions being both celebrated and panned by community members.

During the BIA’s Dec. 16 meeting, the executive informed attendees that it had a special meeting late last month to provide comments on the recommendations that it felt were relevant to the business community. Those comments were sent to council and were part of the final report that council reviewed and officially received on Dec. 6. 

The BIA stated that having a skateboard park would be great, as skateboarding is a source of damage at Blyth Memorial Hall. 
“A fulsome, well-maintained skateboard park would give the skateboarders a proper park to use as a venue, rather than our main street,” the executive wrote. 

The BIA executive also felt the results of the campground pilot project, which was initially marked to be discontinued by the consultants behind the report, were skewed as they didn’t start until midway through the camping season. The executive wrote it had several concerns about the way the campground was discussed in the report, including asking what the definition of success was for the park in the report when the consultants said the grounds could be maintained “as long as they continue to be successful”. The BIA executive also supported moving the library to the Blyth and District Community Centre as a way of increasing the viability of the centre.

The BIA executive also pointed out holes in the plan, including the fact that the Goderich-to-Guelph (G2G) Rail Trail was excluded from a recommendation to prepare a trails master plan.

“The G2G trail has been excluded from this key direction,” the executive wrote. “The G2G runs through North Huron and has been growing exponentially in popularity and use throughout the pandemic. It is used by both local and tourist populations, is one of the busiest trails in the country, and an economic driver for the village of Blyth. The BIA requests that the G2G trail be added to this master plan.”

During the BIA meeting last week, Blyth Lions Club representative John Stewart elaborated on a letter he had penned on behalf of the club to North Huron regarding several suggestions for the community.

In the letter, Stewart said there were concerns about both the recommendation to try and replace the Lions Club’s wading pool with a splash pad and remove one of the community’s baseball diamonds.

During the meeting, he elaborated on those issues, saying that while the Lions Club’s own research showed people weren’t interested in a splash pad over the wading pool, it was also a difficult change to approach.

“It’s not as easy as it sounds,” he said, explaining the Lions Club had sought out information about such a change before, finding it would cost at least $90,000.

In the letter, Stewart said the club planned to go forward with a splash pad, despite the cost, until users of the pool said they wanted the club to retain the pool.

Stewart explained there wasn’t enough water capacity to the Lions Club park to make a splash pad operational, saying the size of service lines to the park would need to be increased. He also said the water used for a splash pad couldn’t go into the storm sewers, because it’s chlorinated, and couldn’t go in to the sanitary system as it would put it over capacity, meaning the Lions would have to collect the water from the splash pad and have it disposed of, which would be expensive.
BIA Chair David Sparling said he was surprised there wasn’t enough water pressure for a splash pad.

Stewart also spoke to the removal of a baseball diamond, saying that while he and the club agreed there needed to be more sports facilities in the community, including pickleball/tennis courts, basketball courts and space for floor hockey, removing the baseball diamond wouldn’t be the club’s first choice. He said that, once that move was made, the community would be dismissing the opportunity to host many baseball diamonds.

He said over the past year there had been tournaments held at the diamonds that brought a number of young people into the community, which was good for both the campground and local businesses.

Stewart said the Lions Club would be open to discussing using some of the land it has to the east of the wading pool and playground at Lions Park to house some of those facilities, but that it couldn’t fundraise for them alone, and would need to work with private interests and/or governments to get the above facilities constructed for the community.

Councillor Kevin Falconer said the report wasn’t exactly what North Huron Council expected to receive, saying he anticipated it would have been more of a scientific analysis of the facilities available and their life cycles, but did say the final report (a 203-page document presented on Dec. 6, in comparison to the slideshow made available to the public earlier in the year) had good information in it that council could use in the future.

“The full report went into more detail [than the brief slideshow] and kind of made an attempt to explain some of the decision-making,” he said.

Falconer did say the report was somewhat generic and likely would look similar to reports for other communities, but said the final document would be similar to the municipality’s strategic plan in that it helps to guide discussion and the decision-making process.

He said many of the recommendations wouldn’t be pushed for any time soon, specifically stating there wasn’t a plan to remove a baseball diamond right away. 

“The report was a framework to look at what we have and consider what the trends are going forward,” he said, before saying there was no real consideration given to the effect that some of the recommended changes would have.

Stewart said he saw the value in the report, once again saying that more sports facilities are needed in the community.
Rev. JoAnn Todd, who represents the local churches on the BIA executive, asked what council planned to do with the plan, given that the reactions to the report were so diverse.

Falconer said the full report was much more in-depth than what the public first saw, and having the full scope of the report made it “a little easier to swallow”.

“The portion they came out with was a mission statement,” he said. “There was much more information available in the full report.”

He said council had received the report and that the extra information had “mellowed out” all the shocking recommendations in the report.

“It is a good document,” he said. “[Some of those early reactions] were knee-jerk.”