The owner of a used car dealership is looking to leave the downtown core.
Dennis Krogman has owned a dealership and been at his downtown location for almost 50 years.
Krogman and his daughter Denise have been fighting with the city since 2018 to stop the motion of putting a safe injection site beside their business, but in the end lost the dispute.
Denise says there has been a lot of controversy about safe injection sites and its ultimately affecting their business. Her and her father have made the decision to
put their used car dealership up for sale a lot sooner than they anticipated.
“We’re not just fighting it because of the dangers of the neighborhood, we’re fighting it because we don’t believe its actually anyone.”
A car for sale next to the safe injection site (George Ring/XFM News)
A trailer was set up in June, which opened in July as a temporary site until the building get completed. Denise said the construction company set up a black tarp and they ended up having people sleeping in there which apparently has never happened before. The tarp was eventually taken down, but they have still been experiencing and increase of loitering.
Being open since 2018, Sonya Burke, the Director of Harm Reduction Services, says they have saved over 400 overdoses, and helped around 3000 unique individuals. The goal is to help reduce deaths, and the needs to meet people where they’re at.
“Substance use is a health care issue that we are struggling as a community to do better”
In 2018, the community did a consultation and looked at all the factors the come with opening a safe consumption site. The ultimately narrowed down to the areas where high activity occurred recommended by the community. The were eventually fortunate to find a landlord who was willing to sell to them. This ended up being 446 York St. which was an old music store.
Once renovations are complete, Burke says this facility will be state of the art which is something they’ve never had the opportunity to have before. Now that the ministry is able to support a bigger facility, they were able to move from their temporary site.
Krugman said they have not listed the dealership yet, but they are looking and speaking with agents to see some offers.
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