Duane Hicks
The recently-cleared site of the former Rainy Lake Hotel is not a parking lot.
That message was sent loud and clear by the town as it erected fencing around the property which, in the last month-and-a-half since the hotel was demolished, has been used by some drivers as a new parking area.
Fort Frances CAO Mark McCaig said council decided to put up a fence to make it clear the area is not—nor was it ever intended to be—a parking area.
The number-one concern has been that motorists were driving in and out of the site from Scott Street, passing over the area where the curb had been cut away to do the sewer service work there.
“They were driving over that like it was an entrance, either taking a right or left turn depending on which way they were coming on Scott Street,” noted McCaig.
“If people are turning and there’s an accident, is the excuse going to be, ‘Oh, I was just trying to get to the parking lot so I turned and there was a traffic accident?’” he asked.
“We have authorized no such turning,” McCaig stressed. “There’s no entrance way to that off of Scott Street but people were accessing it off of there, going over the curb.
“The last thing we need is somebody going through that area that isn’t even an entrance way and hitting somebody that’s walking down the street, or having an accident while turning in there or hitting a parked car,” he remarked.
“It’s not a side street, it’s not an entrance way,” McCaig reiterated.
The town conferred with its insurance company and learned the site poses some potential liability concerns if the area is not designated or maintained as an area for a parking lot, and then somebody falls or has an accident, said McCaig.
He noted there was one instance already where an individual claimed to have scraped themselves on a remnant of the demolition that was still on-site.
“We haven’t designated that as a parking lot,” McCaig said. “We are not maintaining it as a parking lot.
“There’s no lighting for a parking lot.
“We have no intention of maintaining it as a parking lot,” he added.
“That’s a cost we’ve never had in a hundred years so we’re not going to put it on the taxpayers now.”
The town won’t be clearing the area of snow.
McCaig estimated that if motorists continued to park there through the winter and into spring, the area would become a mess.
He also clarified that, despite some people on social media claiming the town spent a whole bunch of money on “the Great Canadian Parking Lot,” there’s never been any intention for the space to be a parking lot.
It’s been site-prepped to be a market square.
“We made a commitment to our funding entities from the government to do a development there and that development was not a parking lot,” McCaig stressed.
“The development was a market square.”
The town has put out a request for proposals looking for an architecture firm to design an open-air market square at the site.
The deadline for RFP submissions to the town is 2 p.m. on Tuesday, Jan. 5.
