Protect Our Elora Heritage Area

05/02/2022

CITIZENS OF TOWNSHIP OF CENTRE WELLINGTON
You are invited to
A COMMUNITY CONVERSATION:

SMALL TOWN RETENTION CHALLENGED BY INTENSIFICATION

On May 12, 2022 from 7 pm to 8.30 pm, the Wellington branch of the Architectural Conservancy of Ontario (ACO) is hosting an “open microphone” conversation for citizens of Centre Wellington. This community conversation will take place at Knox Presbyterian Church, Elora, joined by local candidates running for office in the June 2 provincial elections.
Affordable and attainable housing is recognized as a national, provincial and municipal issue of paramount importance. Municipalities across the province have rejected the anti-democratic recommendations of the Housing Affordability Task Force to disenfranchise local councils and citizens and dictate solutions from Queen’s Park. Now it is up to residents to register their opinions.
What solutions to our housing affordability crisis do candidates propose? What do residents reflect on these issues? Surveys have shown that residents place a high value on retention of our small-town ambiance and heritage areas. Where and how should intensification be mandated? What impact will it have?
The open microphone format of our ACO May 12th meeting offers all citizens of the Township of Centre Wellington a first occasion for discussion of this topic. Staff, councillors and committee members of the Township are also invited to participate. It is an important opportunity to explore and foster well planned growth through collaborative community conversations which permit discussion and compromise in the best interests of all.
The large space of Knox Church allows for adequate social distance seating and participants are encouraged by the Session and Board of Knox to wear masks.

01/28/2022

Critical decisions are about to be made regarding the conservation of the heritage areas of Elora and Fergus. Our Wellington Branch of the educational and advocacy group Architectural Conservancy Ontario (ACO) will release an anonymous public survey in early February through the ACO/GuelphWellington website. Your opinion is valuable in determining where and how growth should, or should not, occur in the historic small towns of Elora and Fergus.

01/24/2022

An important survey will soon be conducted by ACO/Wellington relating to our heritage conservation. please watch this website to engage with this public survey through the address with survey monkey that will soon be announced. We welcome all members of the public to participate.

12/04/2021

PRESENTATION BY BEVERLEY CAIRNS, Elora, ACO REP, WELLINGTON to TCW Council Nov 29/2021
Thank you, Mr Mayor, and greeting to Councillors, staff and all citizens who may be watching this important meeting which presents the Proposed Implementation Framework for the Cultural Heritage Landscape Inventory for the Township of Centre Wellington.
Many citizens will be watching with anxiety because your decisions with regard to this CHL inventory prioritization will have strong impacts on their stores, their homes, their businesses and indeed on the very quality of their lives, particularly in the historical Village areas of Elora and Fergus.
STAFF AND COUNCIL ARE TO BE COMMENDED IN UNDERTAKING THIS DETAILED IDENTIFICATION OF OUR Significant heritage resources which every level of provincial law tells us Must Be Conserved. But let’s not find we have locked the stable door after the horse is out. A question we must ask is: can the proposed chl implementation framework protect the chls prior to the township providing full and accurate information about the heritage attributes of each identified chl. This is at the top of our minds.
With unsympathetic development proposals already on our doorsteps, I am here to ask you to make the CHLs for our Village Cores the first priorities on your list. At present we have the Victoria Crescent and Union Street Fergus in these positions. The core areas of our historic villages are expressions of their culture, identity and unique characters. They are also of social, economic, environmental and educational value. They encourage community pride and result in Tourism, which, particularly in the case of Elora, is at the heart of our economic life, along with the Elora Gorge.
We must ensure that all development, redevelopment and site plan alterations in these areas are sensitive and respect our cultural heritage resources. That design guidelines provide harmony as well as limited height as set out in the present Zoning by laws. We know there will be some development within these areas, indeed we are already alarmed by proposals for 5 and six story buildings in our downtown cores.
Though I myself was part of the extensive 5 year study of Victoria Crescent Heritage Neighbourhood, Elora, now first on the list of recommendations, and it needs only a Plan to make it a Heritage Conservation District, it is not as urgent in priority as the CHL which would conserve the central heritage area of the Village of Elora.
I am here to ask you to revise the priorities in the budget to allow these two Village aspects of the CHL recommendations to come forward to first and second place. The acceptance of all 18 areas in the Official Plan is the first step. There must be an expression in the Official Plan that, until the technical studies for these are complete, there is a moratorium on any Development application which does not meet the present zoning by-laws for commercial and residential areas within their boundaries.
Further, I would ask that every consideration be given to the implementation of research committees comprised of local citizens along with the Staff at the County Archives. Local people know their neighbourhoods and have often researched them previously. Local photographers can take the necessary photos. This WOULD CERTAINLY SHORTEN THE TIME FOR THE TECHNICAL STUDIES, FURTHER EXPEDITING THE FINAL CHLs FOR IDENTIFIED PROTECTIONS. In my own experience with the Study we presented for the Victoria Crescent Neighbourhood, this was done with three residents of the neighburhood and two members of Heritage Centre Wellington, and resulted in an exhaustive study ( you see here) of 334 pages, later reduced to a document officially presented to and accepted by Council in May 2010 of 150 pages with many photographs.
Finally, May I ask a question of Mr. Salmon.?
In the current absence of the required heritage attributes and proper Heritage Impact Assessments for planning applications relating to our cultural heritage resources, how will you be able to ensure that our Township’s planning application approval process is in compliance with the statutory requirements of Section 3 of the Planning Act - to ensure that any decision of council that affects a planning matter will protect Centre Wellington’s identified cultural heritage resources?

10/29/2021

OVERVIEW
The unique, small town, 19th century, low-rise character and ambience of the Elora Heritage Area must be held as a public trust, now and for future generations, because it is valued by the community. Protect our Elora Heritage Area is a group of citizens who are determined that inappropriate growth/ intensification within the Elora Heritage Area never receives planning approval. Provincial legislation requiring the protection of what is valuable, and the wise use and management of resources imposes statutory constraints on inappropriate growth/intensification within the Centre Wellington Official Plan designated Elora Heritage Area.

OUR APPROACH
Protect Our Elora Heritage Area calls on the Councils of Wellington County and the Township of Centre Wellington:
• to openly declare that the Centre Wellington Official Plan designated Elora Heritage Area will be held as a public trust, now and for future generations, because it is valued by the community;
• to openly declare that Centre Wellington is not a willing host community to any growth/ intensification proposal within the Elora Heritage Area which fails to protect the unique 19th century low-rise character and ambience of “Ontario’s most beautiful Village”;
• to openly declare that municipal staff will ensure timely, well-informed and meaningful public engagement on all planning matters relating to the Elora Heritage Area;
• to openly declare that planners requesting or recommending planning approvals must provide timely, full, clear and accurate information to decision makers and members of the public
• to openly, transparently, and consistently apply to the protection of the cultural heritage and natural heritage resources of the Elora Heritage Area the same type of policy-compliant scientific analysis and provincial political lobbying undertaken by Centre Wellington in protecting our valuable water resources.

ABOUT US
Working with cultural and natural heritage resource conservation allies, Protect Our Elora Heritage Area is carrying on a tradition of informed policy-based proactive citizen activism to protect "Ontario's most beautiful village" begun by Leonard Knott and Gordon Couling in the early 1970s and continued by Art Murdoch, Don Harris and others from the 1990s to the present.

You never know what you've got... until it's gone.

10/16/2021