THUNDER BAY — The head of the Salvation Army Journey to Life Centre says he’s got no problem with a plan by city council to build a temporary shelter village next door.
At Monday’s committee of the whole meeting, city council members overwhelmingly voted in favour of an amendment by Coun. Mark Bentz to pursue building the village on a piece of city-owned property on Cumberland Street North instead of administration’s recommended site — a triangular piece of land in the Intercity area between Fort William Road to the southwest, the Neebing-McIntyre Floodway to the north and the Neebing River to the southeast.
The undeveloped woodland lot is next door to the Salvation Army’s multi-service facility. Executive director Gary Ferguson said, while several steps still have to be taken before the village would open there, he’s not upset by the decision.
“We help people, so we have no opposition to that location,” he said.
Ferguson added he wanted to make clear that, at this point, the Salvation Army doesn’t have any official ties to the project.
“I think the only concern that we have at this point is that it's continuing to be referred to as the Salvation Army site, and this is not our property, nor it's an initiative at this point that we are the lead organization.”
During Monday’s debate, the Cumberland Street location was often referred to using the Salvation Army’s name, but was done so to make sure everyone was referring to the same location, given the lot itself doesn’t have a public identifier.
Ferguson said, should the site continue to be pursued, he “would believe that the city would like our input.”
“So, we'll (wait) to see what happens at this point.”
City administration, while favouring the Intercity site for the temporary village, had the Cumberland Street location rated highly on a shortlist of potential sites.
Ferguson said he wasn’t aware prior to Monday that the property was shortlisted, but said “we work with what we need to work with … and our goal is to help people.”
City council still has to ratify its decision for the Cumberland Street site at its April 14 meeting. While city administration did generally rate the property favourably in its analysis of available properties, staff said “extensive” site preparation was needed.
Members of city staff said during Monday’s debate that site remediation to combat flooding, uncertainty around where bedrock may be and how much there is, and the very slight possibility of the presence of black ash trees — a protected species — were potential site-specific issues.
If the village ultimately is built next to the Journey to Life Centre, Ferguson said his organization is ready to help, whether to provide a service directly, or to help point people in the right direction.
“A lot of the individuals that may be accessing this village are probably individuals that we've probably already worked with at some point in their life,” he said.
“They may have stayed in our shelter, they may have accessed our food banks, so I don't know if these people would necessarily be strangers to us — I think these are individuals who we probably worked with in the community.”
