Despite rumours to the contrary, there don’t appear to be any plans in place for the Samaritan Centre to relocate.
“There have been no discussions or plans from the city on this matter,” a city spokesperson confirmed — a sentiment Samaritan Centre executive director Mark Dennie also shared.
“There’s no discussion,” Dennie said. “We have not been approached and nothing is in the works.”
The Samaritan Centre hosts various services for vulnerable residents at 344 Elgin St., which is south of the downtown fire station at the southeast corner of downtown Sudbury’s south district.
A $200-million events centre/arena has been approved by city council to be built to its northwest. The city is looking at either renovating the existing fire station or building a new station at one of two proposed alternative sites, though no final decision has been made.
Whatever vacant land in the downtown south district not filled by the arena will be sold for privately owned and operated ancillary services to join the events centre.
This is where the rumour that the Samaritan Centre might relocate appears to originate.
On Thursday, former Ward 5 Coun. Robert Kirwan posted on the Valley East Today Facebook page about the Samaritan Centre’s anticipated relocation. Kirwan moderates the page, which has approximately 21,600 members.
“Samaritan Centre is expected to be relocating to a site north of Larch Street,” according to the headline within Kirwan’s post in which he also asserts, “We should hear soon about the expected relocation of the Samaritan Centre to a site somewhere north of Larch Street.”
Given that both the city and Samaritan Centre leadership deny having any conversations about relocating services, it appears unlikely that the public will “hear soon” on the matter, as Kirwan asserted.
“We’re here for the foreseeable future, and the rumours — you can dispel them all,” Dennie said.
The Samaritan Centre was purpose-built in 2005.
Although not an actual point of conversation with the city, Dennie said the notion expressed by some people that the Samaritan Centre should move doesn’t make any sense.
“We’re an essential service, and you can’t just say, ‘Go away,’” Dennie said. “Where are the 250 people that depend on us for food each day, where are they going to go? … There are a lot of homeless people, and people need to realize that they’re not just going to disappear if we disappear.”
Sudbury.com last wrote about Kirwan’s Valley East Today Facebook page in February within a story about Kirwan and other city hall critics inflating the downtown events centre’s projected costs using numbers which city staff have categorically refuted.
Kirwan’s social media presence was also written about in a January story about local misinformation. At the time, Kirwan claimed, “It appears as though there will be no funding coming” from the province for the Lorraine Street transitional housing project, which he alleged in spite of the fact that city staff were still waiting on the results of a funding application with the province which ended up proving successful a few weeks later.
Tyler Clarke covers city hall and political affairs for Sudbury.com.