GORE BAY—The Town of Gore Bay is back to square one in terms of trying to establish an overnight parking area for recreational vehicles in town. As had been reported previously, the majority of council had been in favour of a limited, overnight recreational parking space (with no amenities provided) being established on property adjacent to the Red Roof pavilion and the former children’s playground in the Town of Gore Bay.
Gore Bay Mayor Dan Osborne, at a town general government committee meeting last week, told the meeting, “I got a call from the daughter of the owner of the lot being considered who indicated the owners don’t want RVs parking overnight on their lot. Our original motion was to provide space in this area, as long as we had approval from the owner of the property. So, I guess we are back to square one on this issue.”
Committee member Ron Lane said, “unfortunately, this all got into the public domain and there were a lot of negative comments made about the proposal and the idea that this was going to be more than an area for overnight parking of RVs. It got spun by a lot of people as the creation of an RV parking lot, which wasn’t the case.”
“I had referred to this as providing the same service as a Walmart parking lot would, just space to park an RV overnight with no hydro or water being provided,” stated Mayor Osborne.
“It looks as if the issue is dead in the water,” stated committee chair and town councillor Kevin Woestenenk.
Mr. Lane pointed out the idea of having the RV overnight parking area was to have this located in the downtown area. It was also the idea of encouraging people to park their RV for a night at the harbourfront area as had been done in the past. He also pointed out having space for about five RVs to park for a night or so on a temporary basis was also expected to benefit the town with vehicle owners potentially spending money in town.
One of the committee members did bring forward the idea of another location for an overnight parking area for RVs on town-owned property, and this will be discussed further.
