Wellington County officials are ready to present the public their plans for Wellington Place.
The lands located in Aboyne already include the Wellington County Museum and Archives, county library headquarters, the Centre Wellington OPP station and the Wellington Terrace seniors’ home.
As well, Groves Memorial Community Hospital is planning to build on the lands.
Because of that, councillors decided over a year ago it would be prudent to consider a plan for the entire property.
Council will hold a public meeting at Wellington Place in Aboyne Hall at 7pm on Oct. 19.
Much of the lands at the site are expected to remain as agricultural lands and open spaces. At a previous public meeting, that met with the approval of many who were seeing the plans for the first time.
County councillor Shawn Watters, the head of the county planning committee, has said the idea for the property is to consider what will become of it over the next 50 to 100 years.
At that meeting, planner Bernie Hermsen, of MHBC Planning, presented two concept plans for the property.
Citizens then made their comments on the proposals, and now a refined version of the plan is coming back for further comment.
Hermsen noted that at an earlier public meeting the county did a survey and there was 100 per cent agreement that protection of the natural environment is paramount with anything done to the lands.
At the last meeting, residents voted overwhelmingly against extending Garafraxa Street in Fergus into the lands – a request by hospital officials. The county has since considered making that extension.
Many felt the extended street would cross walking trails not once, but twice, and they are adamantly opposed to that.
The Elora to Cataract trail, located to the north of the property along Colborne Street, already has a service road crossing the trails, and that was bitterly opposed by many at the time the road was built. Trail aficionados insist they do not want that to happen again.
The county had suggested expanded walking trails and links between those and existing trails.
In both concept plans, a street entering the property off Beatty Line would run between two trails, and not cross them.
There is also a commons being proposed. It is set at six acres. Just to the south of the commons would be designated educational lands.
Officials are considering the possibility of an education facility – nursing, for example, would make sense with the hospital and Wellington Terrace Seniors Home so close.
One thing many citizens did not like was a proposal to have “supportive housing” along County Road 18.
