THUNDER BAY – “We were blindsided," said Mandy Craig, manager of a business located next to the site chosen by council for the city's temporary shelter village.
The Salon Centre is located at 885 Alloy Place, nearly adjacent to the Hillyard site. The business is a wholesale distributor of professional hair, beauty, aesthetics, and spa supplies.
The city has confirmed the exact location chosen for the shelter village is a wooded lot at 879 Alloy Place, between the Municipal Bylaw Office and the Carrick Street off-leash dog park on 8th Avenue in the Intercity area, otherwise known as the Hillyard lands.
"I watched city council on Monday night, and it was just a quick flip. Yeah, just basically blindsided. No information about anything. Nobody reached out to talk to us about it,” Craig told Newswatch.
Craig said she is concerned about “people roaming” through the parking lot and cutting through the laneway.
She said the company is not against the shelter village, but “for safety reasons,” they are going to look at putting up some fencing around the business.
The Salon Centre is one of several area businesses saying they were caught off guard by council’s decision to put the shelter village at 879 Alloy Place without consulting with the community.
City staff declined an interview but in an email to Newswatch the city’s Director of strategy and engagement, Cynthia Olsen, said staff are now "focused completing required site specific assessments" and are “committed to transparency and community engagement.”
Jesse Wilson, owner of OK Tire, located at 899 Alloy Place, said no one from the city had reached out to him regarding the Hillyard site.
“I think that without consulting with any of the businesses around this area, that would have been the number one thing they should have done first before saying this is what we're gonna do and not asking us how we felt about the impact that it's gonna be on our businesses and how everything happens in this area,” Wilson said.
Kal-Tire is located directly in front of the Carrick St. dog park at 590 Central Avenue.
Assistant manager John Curtis said he does not feel “very good” about not being consulted before the vote.
“It would be nice to be involved in that process to know what's going to happen in our little neighbourhood here,” Curtis said.
Curtis said employees at Kal-Tire had voiced their concerns to management upon hearing about the shelter village sites.
"They're just worried about, not that might happen or might not happen, it's just theft and vandalism and stuff that might happen to the buildings,” Curtis said.
He said Kal-Tire will have to put in extra security as a “precautionary measure,” but it’ll be “an extra cost for the company.”
The original motion for the defeated Miles Street site included an annual payment of $125,000 to the Fort William BIA to address the safety concerns of businesses in that area. That payment was cut from the final Hillyard site motion and not replaced by any equivalent measure.
Newswatch reached out to the Thunder Bay Police Service to address some of the safety concerns in the area.
In a statement, the police service said, "the Thunder Bay Police Service continues to engage with the City of Thunder Bay regarding the temporary shelter village project. The safety assessment process for the Hillyard site that was selected by city council is ongoing."
