A Candid Conversation (THE DOWNTOWN FACTOR)

A Candid Conversation (THE DOWNTOWN FACTOR) By Theresa Grant Real Estate Columnist One of the benefits of belonging to several community groups is that you meet many people. With many people come many opinions, and with an election less than a year away I thought it was a perfect time to see what is on the minds of the people. So, I asked, what are you looking for in the next election? I found it very interesting that after we got past the big three, so to speak, there were an array of different things that people took concern with. Now when I say the big three, I mean taxes, crime, and unemployment. Pretty standard stuff no matter where you live today. Being Oshawa, naturally, the state of our downtown is a big concern for most and I found that it really doesn’t matter where people live within the city, the downtown looms large in the minds of anyone who calls Oshawa home. I found it most interesting to sit and chat with people of differing walks and see what their opinion was. Some were more concerned with policing and thought that our police service was too constrained, that they should have more power. Of course, that is not determined at the municipal level, so we moved on to other topics. I found a woman who was not only outraged but saddened by Bylaws that govern helping the homeless. She wanted to see more freedoms surrounding how the individual person could help, contribute and donate. “When a corporate luncheon wraps up with 16 sandwiches left over along with dozen cookies or so, I should be able to take those to the people living on the street” she explained. “There is so much food waste in our society today and to think that I cannot give it away to people who would love to have it, we are forced to throw it away or let it go bad. It just doesn’t make any sense to me.” I spoke with another person who thinks that there should be a limit on how many cannabis shops should be allowed in one area. “From Athol to Bond on Simcoe Street, it seems like every other store is a pot shop”. “I don’t understand why there needs to be so many, he said.” One gentleman that I had the pleasure of chatting with thought that the vacant store fronts in the downtown were a glaring representation of decay in our city. “It’s a terrible shame that this is what the core looks like today, in my day people came downtown to shop and have a meal, it was really nice”. While there is no getting away from the fact that our downtown looks very different than it did many years ago, there is no shortage of opinions as to what is should look like and how to get there, among our citizens. I would like to thank everyone who took the time to sit with me, for being so open and willing to chat with a stranger who asks a lot of questions.