While the media release on Tuesday evening may have caught some residents by surprise, if you have been a close observer over the past few months, it was evident that St. Thomas would have a new mayor come November.The tip-offs were as subtle as the first signs of spring; however, as Mayor Joe Preston phrased it, “It was time to take a step back.”
As he stressed in the media release, the decision not to seek re-election in the 2026 municipal vote comes after “thoughtful personal and professional consideration.“
“All things have to be decided personally and professionally,” he added. “At some point, you have to ask yourself when it’s the right time to take a step back.”
Preston was firm as he stressed that his commitment to the community remains unwavering.
“There are still eight months of solid work to do. I’ve always said I have the best council in the world. Together, we’ve accomplished so much – and we’re not done yet.”
He has spent the past several days issuing thank-you’s, and at the Chamber of Commerce Mayor’s Lunch on Wednesday, he offered a special thank-you.
“I thank Stephanie more than just about anybody. We’re looking forward to some new stages in our lives, but we’re not going anywhere for a number of months.”It’s not as if he is at the clearing-up-the-dishes-after-dinner stage.
“We’ve got a lot left to do in this community,” advised Preston.
“Look out the door of Memorial Arena and see what can be done when a developer dreams, takes an overly polluted piece of land, and says, you know what, what a great place to put a bunch of apartment buildings.
“By the time we’re done with this and the new type of zoning we’re using for what we’re calling the armoury lands, it just makes the dream happen in another sense. A thousand people living in an area overlooking a beautiful ravine and Pinafore Park. What a place to live, right?
“After 50 or 100 years of it being contaminated railway land, and now being able to move forward. It is just the type of vision that this whole room demands of its politicians. Demand it of us. Make it work.
“I see Danielle (Danielle Neilson, the city’s Manager of Housing Stability Services) in the room, and I can’t call her anything but my hero every time I see her. She’s our housing guru.
“And we’ve been working forward on homelessness in our community to a point where many other communities are coming to see us each and every week now to talk about how did you get there? How did you do it? Why did that work and this didn’t?
“I think it worked because this room, this many people work together. We all had a little piece in it. We all said we could. You know, it’s like the little engine that could. We were it, and we’re able to get there.
“Have we reached perfection? Nope. Excellence is on the horizon, though. We sure are getting close to getting those types of excellent pieces done.
“I take Sean Dyke from our Economic Development Corporation and some of the great big dreams that others had, he went, yeah, I can go talk to people about that and sure enough, bring it back to us. It’s been great, Sean.
“My time in politics has also been a time of when people can tell you what you can’t get done. Many of you know my slogan is, yes is the answer. Now, what was the question? And in the beginning, they went, well, that’s kind of snappy, but what does that mean?
“Well, it means saying yes to projects right from the beginning and finding out if you can actually do them or not. And boy, we’ve done more than we didn’t. And so this group, this room, this group of people are the ones that do this for us. We thank you.”
In his inaugural speech as Mayor of St. Thomas in December 2018, Preston stressed the need to talk about growth. And remember, this was several years before the announcement of PowerCo selecting the city as the home for its EV battery gigafactory.
Preston advised, “I want to talk a little bit about smart growth. St. Thomas is growing at a very rapid pace, and we need to be smart about what we do and how we do that.“We want to make sure we end up with not just growth, but end up with a place that all of the citizens of St. Thomas would truly want this to be.”
Preston closed out that inaugural address with, “There’s a saying that being involved in your community is the rent you pay for living someplace. I know that this group already believes that, or they would not have run for council. I challenge the rest of us to make St. Thomas better by participating, by being that group. By making it a richer place, we will be a community above the rest.
“And, not just economic prosperity. But a great place to live, a great place to say you are from, a proud place to wander downtown. Those are the things we’ll do. There is no limit to the growth that St. Thomas can show if we all reach out and lift St. Thomas higher.”
After his re-election as head of council in 2022, Preston again shone the spotlight on smart growth during his inaugural speech.
“As the fastest-growing city in southwestern Ontario, we must act like where we want to be and not where we have been. This means this council must fulfill our destiny and achieve smart growth in the city with the assets available to it. I look forward to this team taking the assets of our city to a great new level.”
St. Thomas is not the city Joe Preston inherited in 2018, and he is confident it is in safe hands and the time is ripe to take that step back.
‘I’m going to move on to another title in eight months,” he advised in closing out his remarks Wednesday at the luncheon.
“I’ve used it already, Bubba. Grandkids call me Bubba and Mimsy over here (Stephanie). And we’re not riding off into the sunset.
“We’re still going to be here. I’ve shared with my council and with the leadership team and even my own businesses here, I want to be an integral part of what is now a very successful and dream-filled community to be at, and we’re going to be here too.”
We will sit down with Preston next week in his office overlooking Talbot Street to review the highs and lows of those eight years as the head of council.
MORE INSIGHT INTO THE TEMPORARY CLOSURE OF THE ECRM
In the first week of the new year, the Elgin County Railway Museum announced, in a letter to the community, that it was indefinitely suspending operations.
The letter noted, “The temporary closure is due to building-related issues located outside of public areas of the facility.”
The museum administration assured that these issues did not impact public safety during recent operations or events.
In a conversation at the time with Scott Sleightholm, President of Railworks Coalition, he concluded, “At the end of the day, it’s really about stewardship and responsibility. As you know, the ECRM exists because of the community.“The community cares deeply not only about the rail heritage that has built St. Thomas, but also that the museum is a gathering point within the community and a community hub.
“City staff have worked cooperatively with the museum and with the Ministry of Labour on matters related to workplace safety and compliance.”
“So we thank the community, and we will continue to move forward and, again, work towards a sustainable and prosperous future for the museum as a whole and the building as well.”
On Tuesday of this week, the city issued a community update on the situation, following a meeting with members of the museum board.
The update provides “additional information and clarity about the temporary closure of the museum building.”
For more than a decade, the update advises, “City staff have worked cooperatively with the museum and with the Ministry of Labour on matters related to workplace safety and compliance.”
This is in relation to a safety concern submitted in 2015, and late last year, the city received a follow-up from the Ministry of Labour.
“Following the event, and in keeping with the city’s responsibility to protect staff, volunteers and visitors, orders were issued requiring the museum to close to the public until necessary repairs are completed.”
As city staff began reviewing the case, they were made aware – for the first time – of a structural inspection report completed in 2022 by a local engineering firm.
According to the city, staff had not been privy to this inspection report.
This prompted city staff to undertake their own inspection of the building and determined that a portion of the facility remained safe for public use, while other areas needed to remain closed.
And so, the Community Christmas Tree Spectacular was given the green light to proceed.
The city update stresses, “If staff had believed there was any immediate risk to the public, the event would not have gone forward.”
Now here is the critical part.
“Following the event, and in keeping with the city’s responsibility to protect staff, volunteers and visitors, orders were issued requiring the museum to close to the public until necessary repairs are completed.”
So, “orders were issued,” and so the closure of the museum was not a voluntary decision undertaken by the museum’s administration.
The city stresses it is not the owner of the building, and “Our role is limited to enforcing safety standards and providing regulatory guidance.
“While the city cannot provide direct financial support for repairs to a privately owned facility, we remain committed to offering technical guidance, regulatory assistance and connections to potential resources, where appropriate.“Throughout this process, the city has worked cooperatively with the museum and will continue to do so.”
The city’s community update concludes, “We understand how difficult this situation is for everyone who cares about the Elgin County Railway Museum.
“We value our long-standing relationship with the museum and remain committed to working collaboratively with the board, the Ministry of Labour, and qualified professionals to support a safe path forward and to help preserve the heritage the museum protects.”
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RE-IMAGINING THE HOSPITAL LANDS
And to close out what proved to be a busy week, on Tuesday, the Municipality of Central Elgin approved the Final Policy Directions and Land Use Plan, along with the Official Plan Amendment for development of the former St. Thomas Psychiatric Hospital lands.
And so, over the next couple of decades, a “complete, connected and sustainable community” will sprout on the 416-acre site, advised Central Elgin Mayor Andrew Sloan, following a public information centre last October.
He continued, ”I’m pleased that the community is as engaged as they are,” advised Sloan. “We’re excited about the project. It looks like the community is as well, so I think that’s great news.”According to information previously released by the municipality, this future community will:
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Provide a range of housing options to support affordability and meet provincial housing targets
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Create space for new residents and respond to population and housing pressures connected to regional job growth
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Support Central Elgin’s strategic goals of sustainability, affordability, and livability
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Include a vibrant main street, parks, community facilities, and cultural heritage features
As part of the planning process, heritage-related policies were updated “To provide clearer guidance for conservation and commemoration, and to strengthen recognition of the site’s cultural and institutional history.”
We sat down this week with Mayor Sloan to dig deeper into what he refers to as “a milestone.”
“It’s been about a year and a half of community engagement and working with the province. What the approval that council did last Monday does is it takes us a step closer to an official plan amendment.
“This was the key step in moving forward and ensuring that Central Elgin could work with how these lands will develop in the future. So what it does is it provides a clear framework to move forward with community engagement on a draft official plan amendment.”
The province currently owns the land, and about 60 acres is being set aside for institutional use, including a possible expansion of the hospital and a school.Sloan continued, “The framework that council signed off on is to make sure that priorities like housing affordability, public spaces, heritage commemoration and sustainability are incorporated.
“So when we first started doing these discussions, I went to look at a community down in Niagara-on-the-Lake and learned a lot about how new communities should look.
“So the more narrow the road, the slower people go. A lot of the times parking is behind houses. How do you make them accessible to families? You have, essentially, a main street. You have walkable parks. You have recreation facilities. So, yeah, it’s a bit of a blank sheet on which to draw.”
A flavour of cities in the U.K. and Europe.
“The development community has always made it clear that people want to be able to ride their bike to work and have trail systems and livable cities. So it gives us the opportunity.
“We’re continuing to consult. And the open house that we had was very well attended. So it’s preparing for the expected job growth, but also in creating something new.”
We asked Sloan to elaborate on the heritage component.
“In the conversations with the province, we’ve always explained the site’s heritage value, and our goal is to make sure that the site’s history is respected. Now, final decisions are up to the province, but I think that we’ve been very clear about the historical element.”
“So we should all be part of the growth, but also part of the benefit. As you know, the ratepayers in Central Elgin or St. Thomas will be affected by the new developments and new investments. So we’d like to be part of that.”
With what will potentially be an entirely new community with a population in the neighbourhood of 7,000, it comes down to paying attention to myriad details.
“And one of the pieces that came up has been the need for a grocery store, so there will be commerce, there will be, as you say, a new development, a new community and by taking sort of a proactive approach and getting community feedback. You know, we want to do it right.”
At that first public session, there was real value in reading the post-it notes with suggestions from those who attended.
“And the first engagement we had was just with the council, and we all went around and used the sticky notes and said, here’s something that we think we should see, you know, for people to be able to age in home, for people to be able to afford homes.
“We hear the developers now talking about the number of homes that have a suite in the basement with an outside access. And these are ways to make housing more affordable.
“And anything we can do to work on that, I think we’ll have a lot of interest in this development.
“Mayor Joe Preston talks about how people will stay here because of PowerCo. We want to attract them. I think that any investment in St. Thomas is an investment in Central Elgin and Elgin county.
“So we should all be part of the growth, but also part of the benefit. As you know, the ratepayers in Central Elgin or St. Thomas will be affected by the new developments and new investments. So we’d like to be part of that.
“It is going to be a generational change with all the development that’s coming. So we want to have our share and contribute what we can.
“This is our opportunity to be part of the bigger piece and to have the Central Elgin constituents share in some of the benefits from the investments that are coming.
“And as I say, I think it gives us a chance to grow Central Elgin and have a sustainable plan going forward.”
Project information, engagement material and updates are available at http://letstalkcentralelgin.ca/ReimagineHospitalLands
There are a couple of open houses scheduled in the coming weeks. See the item below.
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FOR THE CALENDAR
The Municipality of Central Elgin will now move into the consultation phase of the draft Official Plan Amendment, providing the opportunity for public input in shaping the future of the former hospital lands.
A public open house will be held on Tuesday, Feb. 24, from 4 until 7 p.m. at the Masonic Centre of Elgin, 42703 Fruit Ridge Line.
A statutory public meeting will take place on Monday, March 2, from 6 until 8 p.m. at the Central Elgin council chambers, 450 Sunset Drive.
Questions and comments may be emailed to City Scope
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And a reminder, I can be heard weekday afternoons as news anchor and reporter on 94.1 myFM in St. Thomas. As always, your comments and input are appreciated.
