The City of Greater Sudbury is looking to divest of the 12.6 acres of land in the Beaver Lake area which includes the community’s shuttered fire station and welcome centre.
The planning committee of city council will decide during their Jan. 20 meeting whether to declare the property surplus, which would set the stage for its eventual sale.
Although members of the community-led Beaver Lake Fire Services Committee have spent years trying to save these buildings and the operations therein, they’ve accepted defeat.
“That’s a done deal, that’s over,” member Brenda Salo said, adding that the committee has abandoned their connections to the two buildings.
“Declare it redundant and clean it up,” she said, noting that the city still has some work to do at the welcome centre, which she said people have continued using as a rest stop by relieving themselves behind the building and dumping trash there.
“We don’t just want it declared redundant, we want it cleaned up,” she said.
Both buildings are located off the south side of Highway 17 in the Beaver Lake area, between Nairn Centre and Whitefish.
The Beaver Lake Welcome Centre was built in 1994 and is approximately 600 square feet in size. City council members cut the building’s maintenance from the city’s 2021 budget, but allowed it to continue operating for one year using external funding.
The city stopped maintaining the building's washrooms one year later and were in consultation with the Beaver Lake Fire Services Committee for the group to assume operating and capital expenses in their efforts to keep it open.
A lease agreement was provided to the committee, but “it did not meet their expectations,” a municipal report tabled for the Jan. 20 meeting notes.
Salo contends that the city stopped negotiating with them.
Either way, the centre became vacant at that time.
The Beaver Lake fire station was built in 1977 and hasn’t undergone any major renovations aside from a small addition to its south side in 1998, according to a municipal report.
After giving the community a year to bring its volunteer firefighter numbers up, city council voted in June 2024 to close the station when volunteer numbers fell short of the minimum target of 11, reaching only seven, including recruits in training and applicants.
The fire hall closed the following month, with its operations consolidating with the nearby Whitefish station.
Various city departments were consulted, revealing no municipal need for the property.
Pending planning committee approval and subsequent ratification by city council as a whole, the property which includes both buildings will be declared surplus and marketed for sale to the public. Any subsequent transaction will be described in a report to city council members.