EAST GWILLIMBURY CIVIC PRECINCT PLAN: COMMUNITY HERITAGE

NRU
July 26, 2017
Dominik Matusik

East Gwillimbury wants to develop a vibrant public realm around its civic centre, while at the same time preserving and enhancing its heritage assets. Some elements have been in the works over the past 13 years, but it is time to pull them all together through a precinct plan.

The town’s civic precinct study seeks to improve the public realm and urban design of the space around the civic centre on the west side of Leslie Street at Mt. Albert Road. The Sharon Temple, a 19th century Quaker temple currently functioning as a museum, is to the south of the civic centre and is part of the study area.

East Gwillimbury mayor Virginia Hackson told NRU that plans to improve the area have been underway for 13 years and the town is excited to be moving forward. She hopes the area will become an important community space.

“[The precinct] is important because it’s adjacent to our town offices and we have a large heritage area here as well with the Sharon Temple. So it’s a matter of pulling the two together and making it a community space.”

East Gwillimbury development services general manager Nick Pileggi told NRU that bits and pieces of the plan have already been implemented, including streetscaping, preservation of a town-owned heritage building, and a new sustainable plaza at the entrance of the civic centre that opened earlier this year.

“We’ve had different plans, different elements over the last 13 years, and some of those have already started to be implemented. And now we’re looking at that next step, bringing some of those plans together and building on the successes we’ve already had.”

To the area’s immediate west is a new subdivision, currently under construction. Pileggi says an important consideration will be the interface between the civic precinct and new development, as well as existing built form.

He says the town consulted with residents about the precinct during previous iterations of the study, but now they are looking, for the first time, at bringing all the stakeholders into one room.

Hackson adds that the town has heard, through public consultations, that what is important to residents is heritage and parkland.

“We certainly have people that are interested in preserving the heritage and making sure that the precinct is a community square, a community centre... People are really excited about the opportunity of incorporating the parkland along with it,” she says.

The town has set today as the deadline for a RFP seeking consultants to prepare the town’s civic precinct plan, which it is looking at completing by early next year.