‘We had to do something’: Mayor Canniff backs bold move toward new Chatham-Kent Community Hub

Chatham votes to merge several different amenities all under one roof, but not everyone likes the idea. CTV Windsor’s Chris Campbell has details.

Chatham-Kent council has voted to move ahead with the next phase of its $53-million Community Hub project and advance plans to redevelop the former Sears building in downtown Chatham.

The decision came during a council meeting Monday evening, where councillors supported a motion to begin the tender process for the future home of municipal services, including the Civic Centre, Chatham-Kent Public Library, and the Chatham-Kent Museum.

Mayor Darrin Canniff said the vote marks a major step toward long-awaited revitalization and long-term cost savings.

“I’m thrilled with the decision we made last night,” said Canniff in an interview on Tuesday.

“The bottom line is we had to do something. We either fix up this current Civic Center or we move to the hub. And it turns out that in the end, moving to the hub is actually cheaper and we get more services. We gain a new library, new museum, we gain space versus fixing up the existing facilities we have to base standards - we still wouldn’t be up to the accessibility standards that the hub’s at,” Canniff said. “So that’s what that really drove a lot of the decisions - was we’re building for the future. We’re building for the next 50 years, providing those enhanced services for our kids, our grandkids and families with the bigger museum, the much larger library, the additional services.”

The proposed Community Hub would expand the current municipal footprint from roughly 78,000 square feet to more than 119,000 square feet, centralizing services and freeing up other properties across the city.

Canniff acknowledged the controversy surrounding the project and said the municipality delayed action for years.

“We’ve pushed this off twice already. For the last six years we pushed it off twice because no one wanted to spend money in the Civic Center. I get it, I don’t want to spend money on the Civic Center because what value does that add to the public?” he said. “But we got to a point where we had to do something. So it’s a matter of do we spend the money here or there? So it’s not a matter of do we spend the money here or there or the homeless shelters, or that - we have a number of other budget line items for those things - but we had to deal with this situation. We pushed it off long enough.”

The mayor says the project aligns with broader plans to rejuvenate Chatham-Kent’s downtowns and encourage more people to visit the region.

“My target is to make downtown Chatham one of the nicest downtowns in Ontario,” said Canniff. “We’re going to start enhancing all of the downtowns in Chatham-Kent. We want people coming here, going to all our downtowns and saying, these are pretty cool spots to be at.”

Public concerns over affordability and priorities were amplified in the lead-up to the vote, but Canniff said much of the pushback was based on misunderstanding.

“We are collectively at council… trying to make the best decisions for taxpayers and going through that, it’s tough because there was a lot of misinformation about that. And that’s what caused a lot of the angst among many people,” he said. “A lot of people that were against it, I talked to one on one for a while. They say, ”oh, I didn’t realize that, I didn’t realize that," because there’s misinformation. So if everyone had all the exact same information, I don’t think we would have experienced nearly as much of that. But because of the misinformation it created that, the divisive nature of the project.”

Canniff says the municipality expects to issue a Request for Proposals in June, with construction potentially beginning as early as the end of 2025.

“We’re getting ready to roll the RFP out next month, and it’s a perfect time to go out to the market,” said Canniff. “There’s not a lot of construction going on. We’re anticipating a lot of high-end contractors bidding on this and a lot of them will be looking to… keep their people busy over the slower time. So, we’re confident that it’s going to come under what we’ve estimated to be the number and proceed on vote September, October. And yes, construction could very well start at the end of this year.”

Even with economic uncertainty and rising construction costs, Canniff says the municipality has planned for inflation and volatility.

“We started three years ago, we had a very large contingency. We still have a contingency in the numbers now over and above what we expect it to cost,” he said. “So I would be surprised if it came in over what we estimated, but we’ll determine that in the next few months.”

While Canniff says the hub is a cornerstone project, he emphasized it’s just one part of a broader strategy.

“I’m thrilled we’re proceeding on, but this isn’t the end of the projects we’re looking at,” he said. “We’re going to be looking at projects in Wallaceburg, in Tilbury, across the community. Recently we announced we’re spending $30 million on paving roads in the rural area. So it’s right across Chatham-Kent. We’re a growing community. We need to be investing in our community in order for others to do the same. So I’m excited about the future of our community. And this is kind of one of those cornerstone things where we’re saying we need to invest for our future.”

The Community Hub is expected to be completed by 2027.