Condo Living

October 11, 2022 Published by Golden Horseshoe Chapter - By Cheryl Bristow

Beachview Place - NNCC #35

From the Volume 13, Fall 2022 issue of the CCI GHC Condo News Magazine

The Niagara Region has been described to me as Canada’s ‘banana belt’. I haven’t seen any banana trees growing here, but the climate sure beats most of Canada when it comes to winter. Most people here don’t even bother to get winter tires!

Beachview Place is in St. Catharines, the largest city in the Niagara Region, surrounded by miles of vineyards and orchards and within a delightful short drive to Niagara-on-the-Lake, Niagara Falls and the US border.

Beachview Place is situated on the shores of Lake Ontario. Behind Beachview lies the Waterfront Trail, which we residents can easily access by slipping out the back door or rounding the building to connect with the adjacent paths.

The views from our condos are terrific. Residents on the lake side are treated to lovely sunrises, breathtaking sunsets, icy rock formations along the wintry shores, lines of ocean-going ships and lakers waiting to enter the Welland Canal and the lights and skyscrapers of Toronto fifty kilometers away. People on the street side overlook a park on a quiet, tree-lined street in a lovely settled neighbourhood. In the springtime, all of us see scores of birds, including a variety of ducks offshore during the mating season, and in late summer monarch butterflies fluttering by on their way to Mexico.

Beachview Place is an old-fashioned neighbourhood. The main entrance is located in a lovely pentagonal atrium whose windows look out to the ever-changing moods of the lake and sky beyond. Members of the Social Committee decorate this at Christmas, and use it for Happy Hours, or other indoor gatherings at other times.

Just down the hall is our Board Room, which is used not only by the board, but by various committees and even by games players at times.

We also have a nice library full of books donated by residents and curated by a small team of volunteers, a well-equipped little gym, and a heated outdoor pool and barbecue area in our large backyard with its beautiful lakeview.

One of the committees is the team that produces our Beachview Newsletter, which comes out four times a year and delivers reports from the various committees, articles of particular local interest and biographies of the residents. As Editor of the Beachview News for the last two years, I have been impressed by the wealth of experience and often amazing background stories of our residents. Through the Newsletter, people we would normally pass in the hallways become faces we recognize and individuals we want to get to know.

One of our largest committees is our Gardening Committee. These hardworking individuals have collaborated to do an outstanding job in revitalizing our extensive grounds and regularly changing the plants in the decorative urns and flower gardens. An herb garden perfumes the air around our new outdoor conversational seating area, while indoor plants in the common areas of the main floor are cultivated by one dedicated resident.

Our spirit as a community is reflected in our pride and the care we take of one another and the environment around us. Beachview Place has introduced a green recycling program. Paper, plastics, compost and garbage are all separated by the residents and deposited in the community receptacles. Wine bottles and beer cans are routinely deposited in special bins as a matter of course now, and a volunteer takes them to the Beer Store. The money we receive back is donated to the Social Committee to help with their expenses.

Although COVID-19 curtailed our activities, the Social Committee remained active. Last summer they organized outdoor games on the back lawn, and we celebrated Canada Day and Remembrance Day around our new flagpole on the back lawn. One industrious resident sewed hundreds of red and white triangles to form decorative streamers around the pool and barbecue areas where the flag raising ceremony is held. This year our Canada Day celebration was also our first major get-together since COVID started, and to the flag raising ceremony we added a pancake and sausage brunch with the catering, serving and decorating all done by residents.

The Board of Beachview Place has taken several hard decisions in recent years. All of the windows are being upgraded, and since the reserve fund was unable to cover the cost of this massive project, the residents have agreed to pay for this themselves. The 35-year-old pipes are next on the construction agenda, and this will begin once all the windows are completed. Thinking ahead, the Board has created an ad hoc committee to study the feasibility of installing EV charging infrastructure in the indoor garage area as a step forward into our electric vehicle future, and most recently we have developed a Beachview website which will be extremely useful for all of us.

Beachview Place residents strive to make our home a true neighbourhood, and we are proud that in this we have truly succeeded.