Sault Blog

Sault’s Canal District showcases a massive transformation of a former Paper Mill into a vibrant food, retail, and entertainment centre. There has been significant investment in the property from not only the private sector but also considerable government economic development funds. The Canal District is also the gateway to the Sault Ste. Marie Canal Historical Site, Sault Locks, and the Whitefish Island trail system, where you can walk along the St. Mary’s River Rapids.

With all this investment of time, money, and effort, one would wonder why it just keeps enduring these strikes and financial setbacks despite being a fantastic tourism, entertainment, retail, and food venue.

The first strike against the Canal District was the removal of the main core of the Hub Trail to the back side of the Sault Gateway Casino. A Hub Trail serves many purposes: as a physical health tool for barrier-free exercise; as a mental health tool for citizens to socialize and get outdoors; as a showcase of the best a City has to offer; and as a tool to monetize businesses by directing traffic to their doors.

The Traverse City Area Recreational Trails (TART) system going up the Leelanau and Mission Peninsulas is an example of how their Hub Trails are purposely designed to direct, especially tourists, to wineries, chateaus, hotels, restaurants, microbreweries, distilleries, and retail. The Traverse City TART Hub Trail is designed to empty tourists’ wallets, and nobody does it better than them because Traverse City is a “tourism city”. It was a mistake to move the main core of the John Roswell Hub Trail from the Canal District, because that area showcases the best the Sault has to offer and helps monetize local businesses. Return the main core of the John Roswell Hub Trail back to the Canal district; this needs to be corrected.

The second strike against the Canal District was the removal of the Mill Market from the old Fish Hatchery Site. A fantastic location with abundant parking, again on the Hub Trail, with plenty of room to expand. The proprietors of the Canal District site were more than willing to invest their time, money, and effort in a transformed Mill Market that would be part of a complex, possibly showcasing an automotive display, a butterfly conservatory, and other entrepreneurial ideas. Instead of partnering with the private sector to lesson the taxpayer’s financial burden of constructing and forever maintaining this one day weekend market; they took it upon themselves to move it to the ill fated Downtown Plaza. It is now abundantly clear how much the Sault municipal taxpayer will pay to maintain this Mill Market and Downtown Plaza each year.

When the Senior Sault City Administration had the opportunity to partner with an experienced local business to offload the Mill Market, that should have been a no-brainer, as it saves taxpayers money and helps the Canal District remain successful. Instead, moving the Mill Market to the Downtown Plaza was a vanity decision, not a sound financial decision with respect to taxpayer dollars.

The third recent strike to the Canal District involves the insensible relocation of the recently built, again with taxpayer dollars, Agawa Canyon Train Depot at 87 Huron Street (Canal District) to the industrially blighted 429 Carmen’s Way, Watco’s rail switching and maintenance yard. The blighted industrial yard signage indicating that all who enters will require PPE: Hard hat; High-visibility clothing; Safety glasses; and Protective footwear. The Bean-counters at Watco, the USA-based owners of the Agawa Tour Train, who clearly never attended the site, made this incredibly stupid decision, for whatever reason, to subject their train passengers to a dangerous, ugly, depressing embarkation experience.

The Agawa Tour Train is a tourism cornerstone for the City of Sault Ste. Marie, which hosts approximately 30,000 train passengers per year and has become our City’s mainstay of tourism, it would be a major blow to our tourism industry if the Algoma Tour Train were to close. Although Watco did not sign the original lease with the Canal District Train Depot, what leverage does our City have over Watco to keep the Agawa Tour Train at the Canal District?

How much time, money, and Sault Tourism EDC wages are contributed to the Agawa Tour Train every year? How much of the $200M for the new Sault Port Project will go into railroad track reconstruction for Watco? How many municipal tax discounts have we given the train industry over the decades? Someone ought to remind Watco of how much federal, provincial, and municipal taxpayer dollars have been contributed to the railroad line’s corporate welfare.

Our federal, provincial and municipal leaders should do their job and ensure that Watco stays at the Canal District and the Agawa Tour Train remains viable.

Mark Menean, http://www.saultblog.com