This was posted on the Times Transcript today. I don’t know if any of you know of this place, but me and Tamara sure do 😉
By Brent Mazerolle
Times & Transcript Staff
Published Monday June 4th, 2007
Appeared on page A1
This is a lament for a lookout.
There was a time not so long ago when visitors and locals alike could pull off the old Trans-Canada Highway, climb a lookout tower, and see all of Metro Moncton spread out before them.
They could see everything from up there. They could also grab a map, ask some questions, and take advantage of what some would argue is the real purpose of tourist centres everywhere – go to the bathroom after a couple hours on the highway.
All of that took place up on top of the hill not too far to the west of our famous Magnetic Hill, at the Moncton tourist information centre near the junction of Highway 2 and Route 126, a place where most anyone visiting the area from the west or north would pass.
Today, the lookout and the tourist centre lay abandoned and crumbling, thanks to the re-routing of the Trans-Canada Highway.
Both may now sit on what’s now called the Homestead Road, which has a fraction of the traffic you see zipping past on the new divided Highway 2 down the hill, but is there a way to reinvigorate the site, which boasts the absolute best view of Metro Moncton?
The lookout tower was as much a hit with local people as it ever was with tourists. How many young lovers had their first kiss on that three storey platform at night with the city lights laid out like a magic carpet before them?
Could this charming spot be resurrected as a city park, especially as the property is in need of repairs and clean up?
That was just what a caller to the Times & Transcript last week was wondering. The caller, who didn’t leave his name, also thought it was ironic the city’s own property had become an eyesore just as the City of Moncton was cracking down on unsightly properties.
A fine point, we thought, so we did some checking around.
As is so often the case though, things weren’t quite what they seemed. While the City of Moncton rented the property and ran its visitor centre there for decades, it never actually owned the property, according to city spokesman Paul Thomson.
“We rented from the province until 1996,” Thomson said. “Then the province sold it in 1998.”
Ironically, the property isn’t even inside Moncton city limits, having missed the northwestern boundary by a few hundred metres.
The province sold it to Stanley Steeves and Son, who had hoped to develop something interesting at the site, but quickly ran into problems with trespassers and vandals.
“The steps to the lookout have been burned and everything,” Stanley Steeves said last night, reporting hooligans made the place a hangout just long enough to litter the place with rubble and broken glass and tear up the grounds with off-road vehicles. The steps missing from the lookout might of course be a blessing in disguise, as Steeves worries about liability.
Stan Steeves said his son Terry is now planning to clean the site up and sell the property as housing lots. With the million dollar view and the easy access to Metro Moncton, that shouldn’t be a tough sell, but it looks like it spells the end of those views for the general public once and for all.
