Bernie Corbett is one of six elected councillors for Haldimand, specifically for Ward 6, better known as Dunnville and Canborough. As such, he is the go-to guy to get the skinny on what is going on around town. The Free Press was wondering how Dunnville is doing economically. With all these store closures, are we turning into a ghost town? To our surprise, when we met him in the Minga Restaurant, Mr. Corbett was optimistic about Dunnville's prospects.
"Oh, no. Those are just little "cavities." If you want to see problems, go to Welland or Barton Street in Hamilton. We are doing very well. The future is very bright for our town. The real estate market is one indicator that people from outside are crowding to come here. Many houses are sold within two or three days of going on the market. Plus, there is growth in the commercial sector. Jalmar Management will be opening up two new stores, one a drug store and the other a discount store, near Broad Street and Ramsey Road; construction for that just began. The Grand Country Garden Centre will be moving to that area soon, too."
Corbett mentioned that our hospital is a great attraction for potential residents. It will get even better after the planned construction of a new emergency facility on the hospital property -- where the old ambulance facility used to be -- is completed. The hospital is a major employer and provides the town with stability.
What is more, a new pathway or River Walk is about to be laid down to connect Wingfield Park with the bridge across the Grand. The Dunnville Horticultural Society has been very active in beautification projects that you can see as you walk through downtown -- with the help of a few grants and many wonderful volunteers. Similarly, local government grants are enabling the construction of two new apartments on Queen Street in the downtown area. Similarly, some of the success of the Mudcat Festival and the Dunnville Agricultural Fair is due to, again, grants and volunteers, many of whom come from the Chamber of Commerce.
Corbett went on to say that Counsel is presently considering how to coordinate the construction of the new farmer's market and the park to be built right beside it. We are determining whether to have a single contractor to handle both projects, or if it would be better to hire two more specialised concerns. Another growth area is the library, which sometime in the fall will begin construction of its new addition. This has been planned for almost a decade, but the federal grant was recently approved and as soon as that happened, we started moving forward on it. Even as we spoke, demolition of the neighbouring government building was going on.
An hour after my interview for the Free Press with Dunnville's Ward Six Counsellor, Bernie Corbett, I took this shot of what he notified me was happening right then, the demolition of the town building next door to the Dunnville branch of the Haldimand Public Library. Next fall, a new expansion to the Library will be built on this site.
"We will have to take out the dead ash trees in Lions Park, and replace them with different species," Corbett remarked.
The town, furthermore, has great plans for the library. Not only is the new addition going up in a couple of months, but Haldimand County libraries will also be made into what Corbett calls Community Hubs, that is, places where citizens can come in and access many services offered by the county. You can come into a hub at the library and pay your water bill and property taxes online, and for seniors there will be instruction in how to do these and other tasks with a computer and the internet.
We asked about the plans for the municipal building on Broad Street, which as many may have noticed, just went up for sale. The goal is to counterbalance the decentralisation of the community hubs with a centralisation of town offices. When the Broad Street facility sells, the offices will be moved temporarily to the town buildings on Forest Street. Sometime in 2019 there will be a new, central county building opening in Cayuga. "The county is growing from within; we seek to facilitate zoning for industrial areas to attract more employers to the area."
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