Skip to content

COLUMN: Midland Bay Landing plan stokes fear town could soon cozy up to developers

Council needs to think long and hard about town's future before destroying 'last remaining vestige of prime waterfront in the entire area,' community editor says

Developers are not your friends.

That’d be something Midland's council would be wise to learn.

As the Midland Bay Landing Development Corporation’s board seems to be taking things up a notch in its quest to land a developer for the prime piece of waterfront property, councillors need to be ready for the hard sell.

I have covered countless municipal development meetings over the years and even served on Midland’s rubber stamp committee (aka Committee of Adjustment) for a time. And, by and large, the developers slated to address these kinds of meetings rarely spoke for themselves.

Instead, you usually get a happy-go-lucky, glad hander who's often smooth as silk and ready to chum up to the assorted committee members about why the business he or she represents is like the second coming and would clearly respect the environment along with the wishes of the municipality, province, etc.

These agents, as they are collectively known, are normally incredibly friendly and when their presentation is over you really feel like you’ve just raised a glass with your best friend of 20 years.

Some of them could likely even sell you on the notion that a calamity like 1989’s Exxon-Valdez oil supertanker crash near Alaska was actually a good thing because it helped the assorted waterfowl deal with overly dry feathers during the winter months.

In fact, one even helped Springfield land a monorail just like the residents of Brockway, Ogdenville and North Haverbrook.

And as monorail proponent Lyle Lanley tells the good people of the Simpsons' hometown, “You know, a town with money is a little like the mule with a spinning wheel. No one knows how he got it, and danged if he knows how to use it!”

And that brings us to Midland.

The town would likely be better served with a monorail than to destroy the last remaining vestige of prime waterfront in the entire area.

But by showing off its $250,000 sidewalk (aka waterfront promenade demonstration), the board seems more determined than ever to get out an RFP (request for proposal) to the development community in the hopes someone will come along and take this jewel off the town’s hands.

The MBLDC board itself is a bit of an oddity, but follows the lineage of other town committees or affiliated organizations, which feature plenty of folks who don’t actually call Midland home.

While board chair Bill Kernohan retired here and now lives beside Georgian Bay, the others (aside from the two elected officials sitting on the board) are not local residents.

And that really brings up another question.

Why when it comes to forming boards, committees and other related organizations does the town rest so much of its future hopes on those from away, who may not have a vested interest in the town, its history or its residents?

Could an impending election be another reason for the move to pick up the pace?

So many questions and still no monorail.

**********************************************

To view a scene from the Simpsons' Monorail episode, click here.