Historic buildings in Kingston.

   The Rockwood Hospital could be flattened.
Infrastructure Ontario (the former Ontario Realty Corporation) is a provincial Crown corporation that privatizes land and buildings. Rockwood is located on prime real estate, next to Lake Ontario and Lake Ontario Park. 

 Infrastructure Ontario is selling the almost 100-acre Kingston Provincial Campus.
The City of Kingston has already been approached to change zoning laws, to facilitate the residential and commercial development of the site.
     "The subject property is located between King Street West and Lake Ontario, east of Lake Ontario Park". (PDF) Report PC - 16-073- City of Kingston, Page 3/47.)
Buildings at the Kingston Provincial Campus that the City wants to preserve:
Rockwood Hospital
The Rockwood Villa
Leahurst
Beachgrove
South Cottage buildings.
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Kingston Provincial Campus  
     "The property is currently owned by Infrastructure Ontario and contains significant heritage structures as well as a cultural heritage landscape through the centre of the site."
Commercial and residential construction is banned in cultural heritage landscapes, according to provincial laws in Ontario. Yet: "In the north east corner there will be low, medium and high density residential development." People will not even be able to see Lake Ontario and Rockwood, if 18-storey buildings are blocking their view.

If I still lived in Kingston, I would ask the Minister of Tourism, Culture and Sport; my member of provincial parliament and local politicians the following questions:

1. Do the people of Ontario have the power to veto any privatization of provincial Crown property?
2. If not, why not? The people of Ontario collectively own former prisons, mental hospitals, POW camps and office buildings.
3. Is Rockwood being maintained. Inmates at Kingston Penitentiary built the hospital with limestone, so Rockwood could last for thousands of years. The hospital was originally built to house inmates who were considered to be too mentally ill to be incarcerated at the penitentiary. The former mental hospital could be converted into a museum; tourists can be given guided tours of the complex, through Haunted Walks.
4. Will Rockwood or the Villa ever be sold to another Crown corporation?
5. Will trees and shrubs on the land be sacrificed.

Rockwood in Kingston, Ontario is one of the Ontario Realty Corporations most important and potentially lucrative properties.  The complex was featured on the front page of an information brochure.