🏨 The building you've been driving past for two years finally makes sense

~ NOTL News Crew

Drive in past the highway entrance this week and you'll see it now, the rounded wood-and-concrete shape of The Clayfield finally reading as a building instead of a construction site, still a few weeks from taking its first guest. A few kilometres away on Queen Street, the flood cleanup crews are mostly gone, replaced by the ordinary business of a Friday in August. Two versions of NOTL, worked on in the same week: one being built from nothing, one quietly putting itself back together. Both are the story right now, just not both at the same length.

Drive into Niagara-on-the-Lake from the highway and for the last two years you've been driving past a construction site. Next month, that changes. The Clayfield, a 102-room hotel (60 traditional rooms, 42 extended-stay suites with kitchenettes) joining Hyatt's Unbound Collection, is taking reservations for stays starting Sept 18, anchoring a 55-acre mixed-use district called Clayfield Commons at the edge of Old Town.

The people behind it are not outsiders. Co-owner David Feldberg founded Stratus Vineyards, the world's first fully LEED-certified winery, a few minutes down the road. His partner John Hawley has spent years watching what NOTL's hotel stock actually looks like. "Most were owned by Vintage Inns," Hawley said. "We knew there was an opportunity for a modern hotel and for a brand." That's a polite way of saying the town's boutique-inn landscape has been owned by the same handful of players for a long time, and nobody had built something genuinely new in years.

What they built is deliberately not a glass box at a highway exit. Montreal's Sid Lee Architecture designed a rounded form with vertical wood elements rising out of layered concrete, meant to evoke vines pushing up through Niagara's clay soil, which is also where the name comes from. Hawley says the intent was to avoid the obvious move: "We didn't want to drive by a typical suburb on the way into the old town." Whether a hotel can actually change how a highway entrance feels is a fair thing to be skeptical about, but it's a more interesting swing than another beige Vintage Inns property would have been.

The hotel's anchor restaurant, Terrain, is being built by Toronto's Ascari Group under chef Joel LaBute, focused on what they're calling Ontario wine country cuisine, seasonal menus built around the same growers and vineyards this region already runs on, timed to open alongside the hotel. There's also a lobby café and an outdoor space called The Terrace, built around food, wine, cocktails and music. Co-owner David Feldberg framed the pitch this way: "People are looking for experiences that feel personal and connected to where they are." It's the kind of line every hospitality launch says about itself. The test will be whether Terrain's menu actually reads as NOTL or as a Toronto restaurant with a Niagara zip code.

Worth remembering while this one goes up smoothly: not every hotel proposal in this town gets to open without a fight. The 129-room hotel approved for the old Parliament Oak school site on King Street cleared council in 2024 only after residents and the Niagara Foundation spent years arguing the town was trading away community and festival space it wasn't going to get back. The Clayfield isn't that project, it's a different site with a different pitch, but it's a useful reminder that "new hotel in NOTL" hasn't always meant "uncontroversial hotel in NOTL."

For now, Clayfield Commons is betting that a walkable district with local retailers, built by people who already live and work in this region, reads differently to residents than a chain property would. Mid-September, when the first guests actually check in, will be the first real test of whether that bet pays off, and whether the entrance to town actually feels like NOTL once people are standing in it.

The Peach Festival drew more than 16,000 people down Queen Street over its two days, Aug 7-8, one of the biggest turnouts interim Chamber of Commerce director Terry Dow says he's seen, peach cannolis and peach salsa included ("Who knew there would be peach salsa?" he said). Four local peach farmers set up to sell fruit despite a summer that flooded their fields twice. At Neob Lavender, manager Tracy Kent said the farm took real damage but was "able to bounce back and be ready for the festival's thousands of guests." Lord Mayor Gary Zalepa called it "a great day to really recognize the importance of farming in our community." Two residents who'd described their own flood damage to reporters just days earlier, Lisa Molnar and Connie Pillitteri, were both back out for the festival, Pillitteri saying the day's highlight was "the recognition of the hard work of all the farmers." Not every bounce-back story needs a policy update behind it. Sometimes it's just a town showing up for the people who grow its food, twice flooded and still selling peaches.

Jovie Joki marked 20 years on King Street this past Sunday with an all-day birthday bash, balloons, live music, a berry-topped cake from Willow Cakes and Pastries, and a commemorative certificate from Lord Mayor Gary Zalepa. GM Adam Brooker, Steve Carr and Liza Calder rounded out what Joki calls the pub's "dream team." Founder Trevor Smyth opened the place in 2006 after gutting a derelict building at 245 King Street, a grocery store when it was built in 1913, later the Luis House restaurant, shipping in furnishings from Ireland to build it himself. He passed away in 2013; Joki has carried it since, alongside regulars who were there from the start like Irish Design's Paul and Maureen Dickson and Ward Simpson. "We have a lot of loyal customers that come in, and they're more like a family to us," Joki said. "Your support has made the Irish Harp more than just a pub." The pub marked the milestone with a custom 20th-anniversary beer, Celtic Knot White Stout, brewed with Niagara Falls' Blackburn Brewery, and a full year of monthly events planned, a VIP meet-and-greet with the Trews on Aug 29 and two nights with three-time Juno winner Ashley MacIsaac on Aug 19-20 among them. Worth remembering: this is the same patio that took a $218,000 cash-in-lieu parking deal to keep, cleared by council back in July.

Dr. Michael Pollanen, Ontario's chief forensic pathologist and a U of T professor, waded into the water at Queen's Royal Park at 9:25am on Aug 11 and climbed out on Toronto's Leslie Street Spit at 3:12am on Aug 12, a 17-hour, 46-minute, 50-second crossing. He's 58. Swim captain Shaun Chisholm, who made the same crossing himself in 2008, called the first four hours brutal, two and a half foot swells breaking against them, before the lake went glassy after sunset and actually started pushing them along. Pollanen fuelled on carb drinks until he got sick of them, then switched to potatoes and tuna sandwiches. He's the second person to make the crossing from NOTL in three weeks, Hungarian marathon swimmer Attila Mányoki did it in July in 16 hours and 8 minutes, still the faster time. A third swimmer, Hall of Fame marathon swimmer Courtney Moates Paulk, attempts it the week of Aug 23. The quiet park at the end of Queen Street that tourists photograph is also a proving ground, most of them have no idea.

While Doug Ford was meeting with the mayors of St. Catharines and Lincoln on Aug 5, Ontario's Minister of Agriculture Trevor Jones was touring NOTL's flood-damaged tender fruit farms and greenhouses directly, pledging support through Agricorp and advocacy for the federal Agri-Stability Program (per a post from MPP Sam Oosterhoff). Losses are still mounting for growers whose fields flooded twice this summer, the same farmers who showed up to sell peaches at the festival anyway. It's the clearest sign yet that someone in government is treating farm losses here as their own file, not just a line item in the general flood damage. Lord Mayor Zalepa separately confirmed the town itself is pursuing federal and provincial disaster assistance; the flood alert level is holding at Medium as of tonight.

The Town's temporary flood waste drop-off (1565 Four Mile Creek Road) is open today, Friday, Aug 14, 9am-4pm, for non-hazardous flood-damaged materials like furniture, carpeting, drywall and household contents, residents unload their own. Curbside collection allows up to 5 extra bags of flood waste through Aug 14 on your regular day, then 3 extra bags Aug 17-21 once regular collection resumes. Register for special curbside pickup before Friday by calling 905-468-3266 ext. 0 or filling out the form at notl.com. If you farm and got hit, Agricorp's Business Risk Management line is 1-888-247-4999, the province's Agricultural Information Contact Centre is 1-877-424-1300, and Ontario 211 can connect you to community and wellness supports if the stress of it all is getting to be a lot, 9-8-8 is there 24/7 too. One unrelated but useful note: Niagara Pool's regular phone line is down, reach them at 905-658-9718 until it's fixed.

It's been over a year since the NOTL Pickleball Club pitched council on a dedicated facility, and the outdoor courts the town used to have are now permanently closed. In a letter to NOTL Local, Virgil resident Ron Pychel points to Niagara Falls and Chippawa as the model, they applied to the province's Community Sport and Recreation Infrastructure Fund and just landed $11.1 million to upgrade Willoughby Arena, retrofit the YMCA and refurbish the Niagara Olympic Club's track. The fund has $500 million committed province-wide, the largest sport and recreation investment in Ontario's history, and its first round already funded close to 100 projects. Pychel's question for the town: has NOTL applied, or does it plan to? The letter's already picked up real engagement in the comments, several residents pushing the same question. Worth an answer from council either way.

US tariffs on Canadian goods are set to escalate August 19, and Canada-US trade talks have been intensifying all week trying to head it off before then. For a border town built on wine exports and cross-border tourism, this isn't background noise, it's the kind of number that shows up directly in a winery's margins or a shop's shipping bill. Worth asking your own suppliers or, if you run a business that ships south, your own accountant, what August 19 actually means for you.

Tucked into a Queenston property overlooking the Niagara River, Willowbank trains heritage conservation specialists through a three-year apprenticeship-style diploma, more than 60 working professionals teaching hands-on restoration alongside the theory. Executive director Katie Houghton has spent the past year lining up serious validation for the place: Parks Canada committed up to $193,000 this summer toward stabilizing the school's own Manor House, a donor gift got matched from $18,000 to $36,000 through a government program, and the fall lecture series regularly pulls in specialists from the Royal Ontario Museum and the Aga Khan Foundation. It's the kind of institution most people driving the Parkway have no idea is there, quietly training the people who'll be restoring Ontario's historic buildings for the next generation. The school marks 20 years with a public celebration Sept 19, craft, culture and community, 1-9pm at the Queenston site. Applications for the September diploma cohort are open now.

Where to find them: willowbank.ca

NOTL's about to get its flashiest new hotel in years, built by people who already live here, on purpose, to feel like the town instead of a chain. What's the one thing you hope The Clayfield doesn't change about this town once it opens?

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