In the 1970s, residents and businesses around the northern stretches of what was then Gottingen Street petitioned the city to change the name of the street to Novalea Drive. The change was made to disassociate the Hydrostone area from the black business district and social housing project on the more southerly reaches of Gottingen Street, which were deemed a blight by the whiter and wealthier folks in the Hydrostone.
Fast forward 40 years and businesses in the Hydrostone area have once again successfully petitioned the city to disassociate them from their southern neighbours.
At issue is the newly formed North End Business Improvement District. BIDs are formed and funded through a vote of property owners; if the vote is successful, a small increase in property taxes are applied to all commercial property in the area.
In the North End BID case, fully 66 percent of property owners in an area including Agricola and Gottingen Streets from Cogswell Street north to the Hydrostone voted in favour of the BID. But in July the owner of the Hydrostone Market asked that council remove his property from the BID, and council agreed, passing a motion omitting “the Hydrostone” from the BID.
But council didn’t define “the Hydrostone” in July, and so Tuesday the issue came back before council. In the intervening months, the owner of every other commercial property in the Hydrostone area—16 parcels total—said they, too, should be omitted. And once again, council agreed.
Councillors have so internalized the coded language they probably aren’t aware of it, but it’s easy to read through the lines. “These businesses are successful and don’t need the city’s help,” said Jerry Blumenthal, implying that more southerly businesses aren’t successful and need a handout. That sentiment was echoed by several other councillors, who contrasted the upscale Hydrostone to its less distinguished neighbours. Later in the evening council would again upset Gottingen area residents when it approved a private developer’s plan for St. Pat’s Alexander school.
In financial terms, breaking the Hydrostone out of the BID takes $9,616 from its annual budget, or 8.5 percent, reducing the budget to $103,501, making the new organization’s job that much more difficult.
This article appears in Dec 15-21, 2011.
Perhaps the business owners at Hydrostone just got tired of cleaning “DIE YUPPIE SCUM” off of their properties.
Re St Pat’s Alexandra : The area has an NDP MP and an NDP Cabinet Minister and an NDP councillor and somehow not one of those 3 easily elected for decades representatives made any coherent and sustained effort to convert the former school into a multi-purpose community centre which is so obviously needed.
They must all be racists.
Megan Leslie has a good excuse…. she told CBC radio she spends 70% of her time dealing with immigration issues !!!
Cry me a river gottingen street. Try raising your kids not to curb stomp random people.
Who can blame them, if I were in charge of the Hydrostone business area I would erect a ten foot fence and keep the undesirables back in the public housing ghetto where they belong. They are like skunks, everwhere they go the bring destruction and a god awful smell, is there no bathing facilities in the housing developments?
Right on Joe Blow- Ms Leslie would rather fly down to Washington and cry about the Alberta oil sands rather than look after her constituents. While being engaged in that matter she could also try to impress on her charges, that the streets and sidewalks are for all to use and not for a few to lie in wait for their next mugging victim. Just goes to show that these thug hugging NDP’s like to put on the show that they are tolerant and understanding, well tell that to a pit bull the next time they are chewing on your leg, or to Jarell or Leroy the next time they have a 38 shoved up your nose. The best defense is offence shoot first answer questions later-with your lawyer present of course.