Five Needs Fulfilled with One Solution
EDITORIAL
As a new journalist I was taught the five Ws — who, what, where, when, and why — with the view that every story should answer those questions.
Well, here’s a story — more a perspective really — that offers five alternate Ws.
It’s about five entities with five different needs that can be met with cooperation and negotiation.
It starts with the departure of the Bank of Nova Scotia, leaving Pugwash because it no longer contributes enough to the insatiable demand of share holders and executive bonuses.
Can a community call itself a community without a financial institution? Of course it can, but that is another story.
Enter the Pugwash Coop board of directors who saw an opportunity to introduce the Community Credit Union, a kind of sister organization born out of the cooperative movement championed internationally by Moses Coady of the Antigonish Movement.
Birds of a feather, the two saw a certain synergy and the credit union CEO agreed there was merit to explore the idea. Following an impressively, well attended public meeting, the CEO said this makes sense. But there was a problem — there was no place suitable to locate a branch — the Coop was, itself, short of space.
Lurking in the background of the issue is the Nova Scotia Liquor Commission whose modest operation in the Coop building also wanted to expand.
An earlier coop board recommended selling the operation to Sobeys, a company that agreed to build anew on the property to offer both a larger store and the requested space for the NSLC.
Enter a fourth player, the Pugwash Village Commission which owns the property next door, often referred to as “the old fire hall.”
The Village calls it their public works shed, and if there ever was a shed in need of public works, that building is it.
Even the village commissioners have come to admit the building is an eyesore and they have entertained recent interest by possible buyers but no takers to date.
The building is solid but it is more than the village needs, so renovation would only draw attention to unused space. The village clerk has long held out for a buyer that would offer enough to build a new public works shed, but maybe the time has come too realise that such hopes are closer akin to dreams.
Just think, the Coop could buy the building, perhaps with funding from its sister, the Credit Union, and together they could use the building or the property on which it sits to accommodate the space required by a full-fledged financial institution, a more robust grocery store, and a liquor store that adds a cannabis facility or whatever else it had in mind.
That’s not just a win, it is a win times four.
But, you may ask, what about the 5 Ws? That’s the community, perhaps the biggest winner of them all. We would be rid of the eyesore while gaining needed, new, and valuable services in a modern facility which speaks well of the community, joining the new library, the impressive stage at Harbourfront Centre, the highly successful Farmers’ Market which continues to grow and improve its surroundings, the Pugwash Open Air Gallery which adorns the community, and the impending development at the Bill Mundle Marina at the Pugwash Yacht Club.
The leadership of the Coop, the credit union, the NSLC, and the village need to put their heads together and make it happen. Don’t get greedy — neither the buyer nor the seller — and miss an opportunity for a giant win, times five.
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