Ay ay! Sea Cadets eyeing new facility on city's southern shore

Barrie’s young sailors are set to sail to the south shores of Kempenfelt Bay.

Talks are planned for tomorrow, which could begin to lay the groundwork to relocate the Navy League/Sea Cadets’ facility and boathouse to the waterfront’s south shore.

Navy League branch president Diane Chislett and Mayor Alex Nuttall are scheduled talk Tuesday.

“We are going forward,” Chislett said of a new building. “Who pays is part of the talks … having a business plan drawn up. It would still be a City of Barrie building, on city property. I don’t expect the city to fork out all of the money.

“We’ve been working on this for years,” she added. “We have a plan to put forth a whole program and campaign in order to raise money, and it won’t be just raising money in Barrie. Ideally … I would like to raise over $1 million.

"As soon as the city says they are going to go ahead with this, we are going to start the fund-raising.”

Since Sea Cadets come to Barrie from across central Ontario, money for a new facility would be raised from across this region, Chislett said.

Any plans for a new Sea Cadets building, and the financing, would still require city council approval.

“We’re going to start discussing all of that (Tuesday),” Nuttall said. “But I would say it’s discussion, not negotiation. Staff do negotiations, but we can discuss what the politics if it are, what the art of the possible there is and I think that the overall goal is the south shore of the bay.”

He said the location is not cast in stone, but the south shore is where it best fits — although no exact spot was given.

“To me, Tyndale Park is a non-starter, the same with Minet’s Point (Park),” Nuttall said. “You really end up trying to turn what are local neighbourhood community parks into something bigger than what they were ever destined to be, and there isn’t the same presence of public services that are on the main part of our waterfront.

“For me, I’d prefer to see it on the south shore,” he added. “It doesn’t mean there can’t be another location proposed, it’s just with all the information we’ve received to date, the south shore looks like the location.”

Chislett said the new facility’s cost and size have not yet been determined, but it will need to have indoor and outdoor storage, a full kitchen, chairs and classroom tables, and running water. The group's current boathouse facility is near the Spirit Catcher on Simcoe Street.

“I can’t tell you how much I’d love to flush a toilet,” she said. “It needs to be more of a facility that we can use year-round. Right now, it’s a tin shack so there’s no insulation, there’s no real heat or anything like that, a concrete floor. We have made use of it in the winter, we’ve loaded up our float for the Santa Claus parade in there.”

Chislett said a new facility wouldn’t just be for the Sea Cadets and the Navy League.

“We’re in talks with the army and air cadets, who also are dying for extra space, so it wouldn’t just be for us,” she said. “If we can find Boy Scouts and Girl Guides that need to rent a building, for one night a week, then we have it. It’s not just for the Sea Cadets.”

Barrie has about 130 young sailors, along with those from the Nautical Training Centre, so cadets from all around central Ontario would go there for their sail training.

Nuttall said previous waterfront master plans have envisioned public services and tourism attractions, such as a restaurant, at the current Sea Cadets building. There would also need to be public consultation and talks with Tourism Barrie about what should go there.

Nuttall said the decision council makes on the Sea Cadets is an important one for the waterfront’s future.

“It’s two-fold, right?” he said. “Because it’s moving from one place to another, there are two pieces of our waterfront that are really encapsulated inside this discussion. When you think about how important our waterfront is to the city and then you have two pieces of it tied up in this one discussion…”

A motion to approve in principle Barrie’s waterfront strategic plan update has been deferred until the September meeting of the infrastructure and community investment committee.

Nuttall asked for the delay so there could be talks with the sea cadets about their relocation, and include it in the update.

“It seems to be something that didn’t really make the cut as the priority that I personally believe it is, and the council and city believes it is,” he said.

Flanked by Barrie Marina and the Bayfield Street basin transient marina, the Sea Cadets building has been city property since 2016 and the Navy League/Sea Cadets have a lease of approximately 23 years there, Chislett said.

But as Kempenfelt Bay has become busier with boat traffic, the Sea Cadets have looked for a new facility.

“It’s too busy on the waterways, for safety issues,” Chislett said. “There’s those great big boats in the transient marina, that’s on one side of us, and on the other side of us is the entrance to the public (Barrie) marina. And then you have everything from big boats to jet skis coming out there, and we have kids that are in boats that don’t have motors. They’re in sailboats.”

She also said there are better uses for the Sea Cadets property.

“That little piece of property that we are on is basically downtown Barrie is a prime location for the public,” Chislett said. “It would be more beneficial to everybody in Barrie to have something there that’s more for everybody.”

The property, which includes a 60-by-40-foot, two-level boathouse, is located between Maple Avenue and Bayfield Street. The boathouse is used for repairs, storage, meetings and events as well as a general gathering place for parades and movie nights.

The Navy League is for kids aged nine to 12, while the Sea Cadets is for 13- to 18-year-olds.