LETTER

Replacing Canadian Tire 

 

What a fabulous idea in last week’s editorial!  I would have never thought of it, but you made some creative points about what can be done with the property owned by Canadian Tire (CT) along Principale and Wilfrid-Lavigne.  I never thought about it being so expansive, but it is a huge chunk of prime territory in "old" Aylmer. 

 

It's logical that citizens would like to have another big store to replace CT and to replace some of the items that CT provided the people of Aylmer.  Now that we lost two big stores (Zellers being the other store), we would need another big draw to keep customers from going into Hull (Plateau) or back to Ottawa.  But I think the ideas expressed in the editorial have a lot of merit.

 

I like Mike Duggan's call for "more green and less grey".  Josee Lacasse was also "on the same page".  To me, the idea of creating a small park right on the corner is really appealing because all there is within eye-shot of that corner is buildings, parking lots, mall stores, and...more parking lots!  I'm not suggesting adding children's play structures but it would be nice to have an old-fashioned gazebo in the center and maybe a water fountain, some park benches and some statuary here and there.

 

I'm assuming that the City would have to buy a section of the land.  Maybe other business would like to purchase other sections of the CT land and build stand-alone shoppes (à la old-fashioned shops), the construction materials in keeping with the "heritage" nature of that corner's surroundings. 

 

I look forward to seeing other ideas to come forward from businesses and our local politicians. Thanks for "planting the seeds"!

 

Steve d’Eça

Aylmer