No community centre in the Shops at Don Mills!

Please read the below letter from Terry West, President of the Don Mills Residents Inc. (DMRI)

"As many of you will have learnt from the Press, the application for the re-development of the Don Mills Centre (DMC) site was refused last night by City Council, on a very narrow vote of just 17 to 16. As expected, Councillor Denzil Minnan-Wong voted against the application and effectively killed a Community Centre for our community. This is obviously a great disappointment to us all and will be especially hard on our youth, young families and seniors, who now will have no public facility in which to socialize or exercise. The pool would have been the greatest asset, in particular the therapeutic pool that would have been available for seniors aquafit programmes and teaching infants to swim.

I would like to say a great THANK YOU to everyone who supported our efforts, although we will never know the numbers it must have been in the 100’s. It has been pretty obvious from the beginning that the City Planning Department has its own agenda which they put before the wishes of our community. We can rest assured that this will not be the last development proposal to come our way but unfortunately the offer of a community centre will very unlikely come again. The application will now go to the Ontario Municipal Board (OMB) and although it’s impossible to forecast any OMB decision, our legal counsel say it is very likely that this application will be approved. We understand that this is also the opinion of the City lawyer, which makes the Council decision so much harder to understand. The result of the OMB hearing will not be known until next summer. In the meantime, we will continue to assist Civitan in their efforts to renew the Don Mills Arena and remain committed to keeping Don Mills the best community in the City in which to live.

Terry West
President"