🍻$218,000 later, this pub gets its patio back

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~ NOTL News Crew

White Oaks has been quietly filling up with the best under-19 squash players on the planet all week, and by Saturday the World Juniors will have crowned its champions in a building most of us couldn't have found on a map a month ago. But the more NOTL story this week happened somewhere smaller: a back patio behind an Old Town pub. The Irish Harp's fight to keep its patio has dragged on for the better part of a year, through a rejected application, a deferred vote, and a redesign. This week it finally landed, for $218,000, and dragged the town's entire approach to parking waivers along with it.

Also close to home, quite literally down the QEW: Marineland's last 30 belugas started moving out of Niagara Falls this week after years of will-they-won't-they, not a NOTL story, but hard to ignore when it's twenty minutes away.

The Irish Harp has run its back patio since 2020, one of the pandemic-era patios the town let restaurants use to survive. When that temporary program ended last December, every business with one of those patios had to come back and ask for something the town doesn't hand out easily: permission to keep using parking spaces for something other than parking.

The Harp's first ask, six spots, didn't go well. Staff recommended against it, and council deferred a decision last December rather than reject it outright, sending owner Jovie Joki and planner Dan Romanko back to the drawing board. What came back this month was smaller: three spots instead of six, a scaled-down patio, and a price tag of $217,992 to cover what the town would otherwise collect in parking revenue. Every department that reviewed it, heritage, building, fire, public works, signed off with no objections. Committee of the whole voted to recommend approval on July 14.

That should have been the end of it. Instead, the meeting turned into something more interesting: a conversation about whether the town just changed how it does business.

Coun. Sandra O'Connor put it plainly, asking staff why they were now backing a proposal they'd opposed months earlier. Jordan Frost, the town's director of public works and infrastructure, didn't dodge it. "I will admit there has been a change in direction since I started the town in January," he said. Instead of treating parking shortfalls as a reason to say no, Frost said the town should use its cash-in-lieu program the way it was actually designed: collect the money, bank it, and put it toward real parking fixes later, structures, lots, whatever a parking study currently underway recommends.

"I believe it is a way to move businesses forward," he said. Every future application, he added, would still get reviewed on its own merits, but the default posture at town hall has clearly shifted.

Coun. Maria Mavridis, whose own family runs restaurants in Old Town, asked about the pop-up tent still covering the patio. Joki confirmed it's a placeholder. "We are extending till 2027, since it's late in the year to purchase patio equipment," she said, permanent structure to follow once the season allows.

Lord Mayor Gary Zalepa reminded council of where this started: staff had been sent back months ago to find another way. This month, they found one, and in the process, may have set the template for every restaurant in Old Town still waiting on its own patio decision.

Council gave final approval July 21. The patio's back, for good this time.

With nominations closing Aug. 20, the town faced the possibility of council temporarily losing certain authority under Ontario's "lame duck" rules if too few sitting councillors return for the new, smaller seven-seat council. Council approved a plan July 21 delegating that authority to CAO Nick Ruller if it's triggered, covering hiring, property sales and spending over $50,000, so the town can keep operating through the transition without interruption.

Council confirmed it July 21: rather than build or expand a central administration building, NOTL will keep spreading departments across buildings it already owns. HR, finance and fire administration have already moved. Council chambers get a $150,000 refit instead: better tech, more accessible seating, and a layout that doesn't leave councillors with their backs to the public gallery.

Council voted 6-3 to grant the final heritage permit for 85 Queen Street, part of Shaw Festival's wider redevelopment of the theatre that already had official plan, zoning and site plan approvals in hand. Zalepa, Balasiuk, Cheropita, Mavridis, Vizzari and Wiens supported it; Burroughs, Niven and O'Connor opposed. The permit requires the project to follow what was submitted "substantially," and stays open to appeal for 30 days.

Council appointed Nick Alaimo, the deputy treasurer since 2017, to the top finance job July 21, replacing Kyle Freeborn, let go without cause after more than 14 years with the town. It's the first major staffing change since Nick Ruller took over as CAO last year.

The province is putting nearly $10 million toward design work for Niagara District Airport's runway extension, terminal upgrades and taxiways, the airport most of us know from i4C's Friday Night Flights two weeks ago. It won't fund any actual construction, just the 18-to-20-month design phase needed to firm up real costs on what's currently a $200 million, 20-year modernization plan aimed at eventually bringing commercial flights closer to home.

Council refused a proposed five-townhouse, one-house development at 1317 York Road in St. Davids. It made things official with the Niagara Pumphouse Arts Centre, approving a Memorandum of Understanding that formalizes the town's partnership on visual arts programming and stewardship of the historic riverfront building, timed nicely with the Pumphouse's own news this week (see below and Local Spotlight). And 2025 closed with a $211,958 operating deficit, a fraction of the $1.18M originally forecast, covered from the Contingency Reserve after a stronger-than-expected year-end and a clean audit from KPMG.

Active sightings are keeping the search going, per a notice circulating locally. Searchers are asking residents to check under decks, in sheds and garages, and to review security camera footage. Anyone who spots her shouldn't chase or call out, just note the exact time, location and direction of travel and call or text owner Louisa Ibbotson at 905-325-4132.

The Pumphouse's annual juried art show and sale is back for its riverfront weekend at 247 Ricardo Street, 10am-5pm both days, with painting, photography, sculpture, glass, pottery, textiles and jewellery from artists across the region. Four first-timers join the lineup this year, including watercolourist Lillian Pasqua and mixed-media artist Dorothy Vandersteen, alongside returning favourites like printmaker Janet Horne Cozens. Expect live demos (pottery throwing, stained glass, photo emulsion lifts), musical performances in the Rose Garden, and hands-on activities for kids. Tickets are $5, free for kids, at artatthepumphouse.ca. A virtual version of the show runs online through August 9 if you can't make it in person.

He spent his shifts at Peller Estates watching thousands of wine corks get thrown in the trash. Now they're hanging in the Pumphouse.

Sal Fasullo, 72, works the retail floor at Peller Estates, running wine and food pairings for guests. A few years ago he couldn't stand watching the corks from every sampled bottle go straight to the garbage, so he started taking them home instead. Peller pours through four to five million cases a year across some 50 brands, which means Fasullo has never once run short of material. What began as an experiment turned into three-dimensional cork art, his first piece a two-by-four-foot guitar in a shadow box that took weeks to build. He picked up technique at art classes at the Niagara Pumphouse Arts Centre, and the Pumphouse recently hung one of his pieces, "Champagne Bottle," in an exhibition. Trius Winery has since commissioned a piece of its own for a new café bar.

Fasullo moved to St. Davids from Stouffville a decade ago after a career troubleshooting production for magazines like Time, and calls the move "magical." He's not selling most of what he makes yet, more interested in seeing where the idea goes than cashing out early, and he's got no shortage of ambition for it: he wants to bring cork art into schools and retirement homes as something cheap, easy and genuinely creative that anyone can pick up.

Sal Fasullo | Peller Estates Winery, cork art on display at the Niagara Pumphouse Arts Centre

Last week we asked what you'd tell a first-time visitor to do that isn't on any tourist list. Nothing usable came back through the inbox by draft time, just a kind note from a reader who loves the newsletter. Worth reissuing the ask, or swapping in something new.

NOTL just put a price on parking spaces so a business could keep its patio. What's the next thing in town you'd want to see get the same treatment?

Reply to this email. Best answers run next week.