LIVE WELL - sustainability centre

From The Reporter Gananoque
Anne Craig

What started as a twinkle in Don Ross and the rest of the steering committee’s eye is starting to take shape.
With the hiring of architect Paul Raff, the centre for sustainable community development is coming ever closer to completion. Slated to be located in the former Textron building in Gananoque, Ross said this new development is going to be a centre of knowledge and activity that fosters the collaboration of organizations and agencies interested in sustainable development.
Paul Raff Studios has been hired to create a market and financial feasibility study and hear all interests to help create a vision for the centre.
“The Frontenac Arch Biosphere Network hosts at least 30 Web sites for organizations and we have about 15 organizations that use this as a meeting place,” Ross said last week.
He was sequestered in a small room at the back of the Frontenac Arch Biosphere office on the Thousand Islands Parkway. Two other meetings involving two other organizations were taking place at the same time, one upstairs and the other out front in the main room. “There are so many different organizations. We want a place for everyone. We have no space to do any storytelling.”
While plans for the centre are still very much in their infancy, Ross has definite ideas about what role the centre will play in the community. “We need to find a way to launch people onto the landscape and tell the story of the region. If the region was a pool, this new centre would be the diving board.”
The steering committee is comprised of spokespeople from 10 different organizations including FAB, Parks Canada, the Barbara Heck Foundation, the Thousand Islands Playhouse and several other organizations. It’s not a committee of council but, as council owns the building, the town is playing an active role in the centre’s development.
“Gananoque is the logical place to do this,” Ross said. “The Textron building is also good because the town owns it. Old factories will be part of the storyline.”
The mission statement is “to establish and manage a viable, creative, energetic hub from which a number of like-minded organizations provide programming and operations that generate and facilitate solutions to sustainable development challenges in the Frontenac Arch Biosphere area while demonstrating and promoting the concepts and benefits of such development on the environment, culture, society and economy of the region.”
Asked what the centre will look like, Ross said he has no idea, that’s up to the community. “We need a lot of input from the region and we won’t do this unless it’s financially feasible. It can’t be a drain on the taxbase.”
That said, Ross said the Lowertown Study will play a prominent role in the development of the centre and the building will also be one of the most environmentally friendly buildings in the province.“We are definitely going to take a public approach to this,” he added. “We can’t find anything like this in the world so it’s a brand new concept. It could be a starting place for regional tours. It can be a place where people ask questions. We also have the greatest concentration of artists in Canada so they will play a role.”
The final report from Paul Raff Studios will be presented to the public on Nov. 23 though a series of town hall meetings are being developed.
Once the dates are set, a meeting will be held in Brockville, Gananoque and an place in the western part of the FAB area.
“This should be nothing but a positive for local groups with a total focus on sustainable community development,” Ross said. “An overwhelming positive is the number of organizations this will help.”