Dear editor,
It has been three months since a picture of Comox's mayor on the site of the Lorne Hotel saying a new pub would be built soon.
I see no shovels in the ground yet.
There two things Comox needs.
The first is new — a bright, clean spacious pub with a decent kitchen. The second is a progressive, forward-looking Town council.
The Lorne is gone, consigned to the history books, where it truly belongs. The old Lorne with its Victorian verandas and cramped interior was an inefficient building to try and run a food and drink business.
Forty-five years ago, George Taylor owned the Lorne and he liked to remark on the layers of debt that the Lorne had incurred over the years. He thought some of the money he sent each month went to Mrs. Fairburn, who lived in the cottage next door.
I'm sure conditions never got any better over the years.
When the hotel burnt down, the debt didn't disappear. It is attached to the land and if we don't get something going here soon we will have this eyesore in perpetuity, a monument to the ineffectiveness of the Town council.
If he needs a five-storey building to get out from under the pile of debt, give it to him. It blocks no one's view.
I am writing as a beer-loving pub frequenter, one of many in Comox.
Alex LyIe,
Comox