Jane Hobson, Centretown News
Some Dundonald Park residents are concerned about the re-opening of a Beer Store in the area. The Beer Store on Somerset Street West has been closed for almost two years for renovations and is scheduled to re-open in mid-November.
But some residents who live in the area are concerned that the Beer Store will attract the old crowd – including aggressive panhandlers and other sketchy characters – who used to hang around Dundonald Park.
The Toronto-based urban consulting firm, 8-80 Cities, is working with cities to improve their parks and public services. Centretown Community Health Centre partnered with 8-80 Cities with the goal of transforming the park from a dark and unsafe patch in the neighbourhood into a welcoming place for new families and people in the community.
Jean-Pierre Dupuis, who lives across the street from Dundonald Park, says he is looking forward to having a Beer Store close by again, but not all of the people who tend to gravitate towards it.
“What I find really amazing is that after the Beer Store closed for reconstruction, the nature of the people in the park totally changed,” says Dupuis. “It was like snow in the spring; they disappeared, they totally vanished. Now we are scared that when it re-opens we will see the park go back to the way it was.”
Some say that the criminal activity in Dundonald Park, such as public intoxication or assaults, have nothing to do with the Beer Store.
“We would often get called to that park for people who were incapacitated and suffering from addiction,” says Gerald Lyon, who worked as a paramedic in the downtown core for many years.
“People who are homeless usually don’t go to the Beer Store, they go to places like drug stores, they’ll steal things like aftershave and things that contain alcohol,” says Lyon.“Those are the people you’d find in the park passed out.”
Staff Sgt. Nancy Wilson says that the criminal activity in the park could be attributed to a number of factors.
“If crime or any other community concerns are on the increase, then we certainly make sure that we increase our presence in that area,” says Wilson.
Others are concerned that the increased presence of police around the park could lead to the unnecessary criminalization of people who frequent the park for substance use.
Lindsay Snow, who works for Centretown Community Health Centre, says that there are alternative services that can be contacted instead of the police.
Snow, in partnership with Somerset West Community Health Centre, organized focus groups this past summer with people who self-identified as substance users in Dundonald Park.
She says that a lot of them are aware that sometimes the behaviour in the park is problematic, but that there are more effective ways to deal with it than calling the police.
Patty Murphy is one of the people working with Snow to raise awareness about alternative steps residents can take if they see a problematic situation that does not necessarily require police action.
These resources include the Salvation Army outreach van, the STORM van which serves indigenous women, Street Smarts street outreach and the Somerset West van which is run by NESI (Needle Exchange and Safer Inhalation Program) at the Somerset West Community Health Centre.
Snow, and a few other residents in the area had a meeting with the Beer Store’s store manager and head of security a couple of weeks ago.
Ryan Utter, a resident who attended the meeting, says that the Beer Store is planning to support community projects in the park to help promote a safe environment.
The Beer Store also says that it will not to sell alcohol to anyone who is intoxicated and will in some instances ban an individual who has been identified as disturbing the peace within the community.