The Lord Mayor race just got real, here's who's running 🏃‍♂️

CJM Property Services is a local, family-run business serving homeowners, landlords, and property managers across the Niagara Region. They handle the jobs that pile up: lawn care, yard cleanups, junk removal, and small property improvement projects. Dependable, fairly priced, and the kind of crew that treats your property like it's their own.

They're actively taking on new clients - if your property list has been sitting untouched, now's a good time to reach out.

cjmpropertyservices.ca | 289-686-1450

☀️ Good morning NOTL. Here's what's in today's issue:

— NOTL News Crew

The Royal George is gone. Not gutted, not boarded up, gone. The building that stood at the corner of Queen and Maxine for 111 years came down last week, and if you walked past the lot this morning you'd see sky where a theatre used to be. The Shaw Festival will build something new on the site, something that'll presumably stand for another century. But for now it's just an absence, and it hits harder than you'd expect.

We've had a lot of those lately. The Wilderness opened. The hospital site is finally moving. The Official Plan has been adopted. One by one, the placeholders and uncertainties that have defined this town for years are resolving into actual decisions. It's a good time to think about who's going to be running the place when they do.

Gary Zalepa hasn't said whether he's running again.

That sentence contains most of what you need to know about where the 2026 NOTL election stands. Two candidates have declared for Lord Mayor. One of them is Vaughn Goettler, the entrepreneur and philanthropist who finished third in 2022 and has been running on a platform opposing amalgamation and development pressure ever since. The other is Andrea Kaiser, the incumbent regional councillor who decided to enter the race after a looming shakeup at Niagara Region pushed her to act sooner than she'd planned.

Both are credible candidates. Both are running on substantively different visions. And both are doing so without knowing whether they're running against the sitting Lord Mayor, which is a strange way to plan a campaign.

Zalepa, for his part, has been busy. Last week, he confirmed that his past conflict of interest regarding the Rand Estate, which led to his recusal from certain votes on Benny Marotta's earlier proposals, no longer applies to the latest iteration of the project. In practical terms, that means he can be fully in the room as that file moves forward. Whether it also means he's planning to be in the room as Lord Mayor past October is a different question.

On the council side, the field is also starting to fill in. Coun. Sandra O'Connor is the only sitting councillor who has publicly confirmed plans to run again. Former councillor Gary Burroughs is back, running on addressing what he calls "anger and distrust" among residents. Weston Miller, a NOTL realtor and Chautauqua Residents Association president, and Steve McGuinness, founder of Residents 4 A Better NOTL, have both filed papers. That's four names competing for what will be a smaller council: as of this year, NOTL's council shrinks from nine seats to seven, written into provincial law.

Here's why the math matters. Fewer seats means fewer voices at the table, and a cleaner read on who the community actually wants making the big calls. The decisions on the table between now and October 26, the Rand Estate, the hospital site, the Royal George rebuild, and the Official Plan's housing targets, are going to land in the laps of whoever gets elected. The people in this race right now will be the ones deciding those things for the next four years.

Nominations close August 21. Voting day is October 26. There's time, but the window for serious candidates to get in is shorter than it looks.

Farm hub on East and West Line runs into a wall of neighbours
A proposal to build a farm storage and operations hub at the corner of East Line and West Line Road hit a packed public meeting this week and found no friends among adjacent landowners. Sound familiar? The Rand Estate formula - controversial project, hostile public meeting - seems to be NOTL's default mode for development right now. This one involves a different parcel and a different developer, but the dynamics are the same: agricultural land, residential neighbours, and a council that'll have to weigh both. No decision yet.

The Beach Read crew has left the building
The Beach Read film shoot wrapped up in Old Town as of June 20 - Patrick Schwarzenegger and the production are gone, the semi-trucks have cleared out of the Legion parking lot on King Street, and Queen Street is fully itself again. If you got a celebrity sighting, grabbed a photo, or just want to share what it was like to have Hollywood in your backyard, reply to this email. We'll run the best ones.

The Royal George site is now a blank lot
The Shaw Festival's rebuild of the Royal George Theatre is underway in the most literal sense: the 111-year-old building is gone. No walls, no marquee, no sign. What goes up in its place will be a purpose-built, modern performance venue designed for the Shaw's actual needs - but that's a few years off. For now, Old Town has a gap in its skyline and a big question about what that corner looks like during construction.

The Town is hosting a World Cup Final watch party - and it's worth knowing why
On July 19, the Town and the Farmworker Hub at Cornerstone Community Church are hosting a free community viewing event for the FIFA World Cup Final at the NOTL Community Centre. Doors at 2:30pm, game at 3pm. Free refreshments, transport coordinated from Cornerstone for farmworkers coming in from the farms. The event came out of conversations between the Lord Mayor's office and the community - which is exactly the kind of initiative that doesn't usually make it past the idea stage. Mark it down and tell someone who works on a farm. notl.com

What's under Four Mile Creek - and why the town is finally looking
The NPCA and Town held a public workshop Wednesday night on the Four Mile Creek Watershed Plan, a conservation study that will look into flooding patterns tied to the creek that runs through much of NOTL. If your basement has ever backed up during a heavy rain, this study is the upstream reason why. Worth following as it develops.

The chimney cakes are back on Queen Street.

Budapest Bakeshop at 118 Queen Street has reopened for the season, which is exactly the kind of news that travels fast among the people who've been quietly missing it. Anett and Todd Kane founded the place in 2019 as the first chimney cake bakery in town, built around Anett's Hungarian heritage and the kind of baked-from-scratch product that isn't easy to find anywhere else in the region.

If you've never had one: a chimney cake is a spit-roasted spiral of dough, crisped on the outside and soft in the middle, rolled in your choice of toppings. It's the kind of thing you eat on Queen Street with no particular plan. Welcome back.

Budapest Bakeshop | 118 Queen St | budapestbakeshop.com

The Lord Mayor race is open, the council is shrinking to seven seats, and October 26 is closer than it sounds.

Who do you want to see run, and what's the one issue you'd ask every candidate about?

Reply to this email. The most interesting answers run next week.