Dozens braved the cold outside City Hall to protest the proposed Memorial Centre stadium plans.
A growing dispute has emerged between the City of Kingston and residents over Victory Grounds Ventures’ (VGV) plans to build a soccer stadium at Kingston’s Memorial Centre. Concerned residents and local businesses—including the Memorial Centre Farmers Market, Yellow Bike Action and the Kingston & District Agricultural Society—rallied in a group of 20 on Jan. 14 at the front doors of City Hall against the Jan. 7 proposal. The protest took place ahead of a Kingston City Council meeting where presentations on the plans were scheduled to take place.
The meeting, which began at 7 p.m., concluded with nine to three votes in favour by Councillors to initiate lease negotiations with VGV, on the condition that the Kingston community is consulted. The vote doesn’t force the city to commit to any actions or approve the plan but allows the City to continue conversations with the company and the public.
The proposal details plans to build a 4,000 to 6,000-seat soccer stadium at the Memorial Centre, with the hopes of serving as the home for the Canadian Premier League (L) and League1 soccer teams, bringing in over 1,000 attendees for events and creating over 200 development jobs.
READ MORE: Turf war over Memorial Centre grounds
According to a City report, the stadium would require removing the existing barns of the Agricultural Fair in addition to relocating a dog park and other amenities in the area,
The report states the redevelopment of the space would still include room for a year-round indoor farmers market, but the promise to keep the indoor market has been claimed as “vague and far in the future” in a petition put together by the Memorial Centre Farmers’ Market, Williamsville Community Association, Kingston & District Agricultural Society, Yellow Bike Action and Beef Farmers of Frontenac.
At the protest, Emma Barken, market operations manager for the Memorial Centre’s Farmers Market, explained while protestors can acknowledge the importance of the project, citing Kingston’s need for sports facilities, its location at the Memorial Centre poses an issue to the community.
“We obviously also understand that there’s not a lot of money to go around right now, and so this is a way to potentially alleviate some of those problems and offer a stadium, and soccer facilities are needed in Kingston, so that’s a real issue, [but] we don’t feel that this is the right space,” Barken said in an interview with The Journal.
Barken explained the market isn’t meant to be moved around, expanding on the importance of the market’s location remaining at the Memorial Centre. The market began in 2012 when local farmers and the Williamsville Community Association got together to increase local food access and enliven the Memorial Centre grounds.
“We are the Memorial Centre Farmers Market, so that’s our location. We’re a grassroots organization that started there, so we fully intend to stay. We’ve been assured that will be the case by our counsellors,” Barken said.
Cassandra Thomas, head of the Fair Ambassador program for the Agriculture Society, attended the protest and spoke about the importance of the protestors being outside City Hall.
“Anyone who’s walking by or driving by, it’s going to get their attention, right? It’s going to get their curiosity. So, I think knowledge is power so together as a collective being here, it’s powerful,” Thomas said in an interview with The Journal.
According to Thomas, this decision is very sudden which adds to how it’s being perceived by volunteers.
“It’s disrespectful to the volunteers that have spent years in these spaces, and then all of a sudden, they’re just going to get it ripped out from under them,” Thomas said.
An updated report from City staff is scheduled to be presented to the council in mid-March.
Tags
All final editorial decisions are made by the Editor(s) in Chief and/or the Managing Editor. Authors should not be ed, targeted, or harassed under any circumstances. If you have any grievances with this article, please direct your comments to [email protected].