Will workouts help draw business?

Debbie Stagg speaks to city council on Tuesday.

City council's decision to allow a gym in the former Purolator building seemed a foregone conclusion, judging by the resignation of the move's opponents at Tuesday's meeting.

Both Councillors Jason Baker and Jeff Earle acknowledged from the get-go they were outnumbered, sensing a majority of their colleagues had already decided Debbie Stagg and Lisa Cassidy should get the zoning bylaw and official plan amendments needed to open a health and fitness club inside a section of the former Purolator building.

The two council veterans nonetheless sided with city officials, who argued, unsuccessfully, that the industrial park is meant for industry, not commercial businesses.

And it's hard to dismiss Baker's warning that, in “land-locked” Brockville, industrial land is a finite commodity.

Baker delivered this message with an oblique reference to last year's Tomlinson controversy, noting acerbically that, not only is industrial land in short supply, but council runs into all kinds of problems when it tries to put industries elsewhere.

Point taken. And, in the direction of CRUZ: “Snap!”

However, the majority in this decision seemed to accept the opinion of the gym's proponents, who argue such a facility in the industrial park will be a selling point in the city's never-ending attempt to attract new industrial tenants.

As I've argued before, the true test of this amendment is whether a 24-hour gym is truly a service to the manufacturers in the industrial park and their employees.

If so, then it becomes a loss leader or sorts: give up some industrial land, in order to speed up the business of getting the rest of it filled.

Time will tell. For now, there's little left to do but to wish these ladies luck.