Dreams of Beans Café to move to new location

You’re reading the June 20, 2024 edition of the Peterborough Currents email newsletter. To receive our email newsletters straight to your inbox, sign up here.

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Good morning and welcome to the Peterborough Currents newsletter, where we share our latest stories and catch you up on local news. My name is Alex; I’m the arts and community reporter for Currents.

“A community centre that happens to be a coffee shop.” That’s how owner Andrew MacGregor describes his vision for Dreams of Beans Café. MacGregor announced recently that he is moving the business from the Hunter Street location it’s occupied for decades to the corner of George and Charlotte.

Also in this week’s newsletter:

• Oily contamination once again observed in Jackson Creek
• Health unit votes to fund continued COVID-19 monitoring after provincial cutback
• What should the new library be named?

But before we get to that, I want to ask you a question. We’re doing editorial planning at the moment, and we’re making decisions about where to dedicate resources. So, my question is: What is your favourite thing about Peterborough Currents, and what do you wish we did differently? You can send us a message here.

Okay, on to the news!

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Dreams of Beans Café to move to former Whistle Stop location

Downtown café Dreams of Beans is on the move, according to owner Andrew MacGregor. He said the long-lived coffee shop is relocating in July from its current spot on Hunter Street to the corner of Charlotte and George — where the Whistle Stop Café used to be.

Dreams of Beans first opened in the 90s and has changed ownership several times over the years. MacGregor took it over last summer along with business partner Aurynn Jacobs Parkin. The pair pledged to run the café as a social enterprise, paying their employees a living wage of $25 per hour and hosting community events in the space.

Parkin has since left the business, but MacGregor said he remains committed to the vision for Dreams of Beans. He said he plans to expand the café at its new location.

He explained that while looking at ways to grow the business, he came to realize the limitations of the current space. “There was just no way to make it work,” MacGregor said. “I wanted to do late night bar service and serve people good hot meals, and that meant we had to start looking somewhere else.”

But MacGregor also acknowledges he’s giving up something special at the Hunter Street location. “I’ll miss the patio for sure. It’s a really charming space here,” he said. “It really is a shame to let go of 29 years of business at this location.”

“I’m very excited about the potential of a larger space,” said café patron Ravon Yates. “There aren’t a lot of sizable venues in Peterborough that also feel like they are on the ground and in the community the way Dreams of Beans is. I love downtown Peterborough because of the places like this that you can’t find anywhere else.”

Another guest, Rowan Bradford, said they first discovered Dreams of Beans when it hosted a Repair Cafe event, which is when community members gather to mend and fix broken items together. “The atmosphere here is great and it has introduced me to a lot of local groups and events I wouldn’t have learned about otherwise,” Bradford said.

“I prefer to think I run a community centre that happens to be a coffee shop,” MacGregor said from behind the bar while pouring a chai latte for Bradford. “The people here make the place what it is, and fortunately for us the people are coming along. We’re not leaving anyone behind.”

MacGregor said he plans to open in the new location during the first week of July. But there’s a lot of work to be done. When Currents visited the new space in early June, MacGregor was renovating and building a new accessible bar.

“It’s all happening very quickly, and I’m so excited and nervous to see what this move will bring for us,” he said.

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JACKSON CREEK CONTAMINATION

An “oily sheen” was again observed on the surface of Jackson Creek this month, the Peterborough Examiner reports. Oily contamination has been periodically observed at the Jackson Creek outlet to Little Lake over the past few years. The city has previously stated that historical contamination on a nearby city-owned property on Townsend Street is one potential source of pollutants.

The municipality has been aware of groundwater contamination near the Jackson Creek outlet since at least November 2021, according to emails previously obtained by Peterborough Currents. At that time, the city was alerted to the presence of fuel-contaminated groundwater seeping into a box culvert that was being installed as part of the Jackson Creek diversion project.

Efforts were made to contain the contaminated groundwater and prevent it from seeping into the creek itself, according to a city spokesperson. But those efforts appear to have been unsuccessful: an oily sheen has been detected on the surface of Jackson Creek at least three times since summer 2022. Sometimes, the oily sheen is accompanied by the smell of fumes. The city has installed absorbent booms and a permeable barrier to help contain the contamination, and remediation costs had reached $1.8 million by last June, according to a staff report.

WASTEWATER SURVEILLANCE

Peterborough’s board of health voted to step in and fund an existing program that monitors local wastewater for infectious diseases after the Ford government announced it would stop funding the initiative, according to a summary of last week’s board of health meeting.

Peterborough Public Health (PPH) has partnered with Trent University since 2021 to monitor wastewater to assess the local prevalence of infectious diseases such as COVID-19. Wastewater data has been the the primary indicator of community transmission of COVID-19 since the Omicron wave of the pandemic rendered individual testing unfeasible, according to a recent board of health report.

PPH learned on May 30 that the province would discontinue its funding for wastewater surveillance effective July 31, according to the report. The board of health voted to fund the program through to the end of 2025, which could cost up to $62,500 per year.

NAMING THE NEW LIBRARY

Last week, Mayor Jeff Leal encouraged library CEO Jennifer Jones to retain the name DelaFosse for the library’s new branch when it opens later this year. The former south-end branch of the library was named after Frederick Montague de la Fosse, who was Peterborough’s first chief librarian, as Sylvia Sutherland writes in her recent column. The DelaFosse branch, which was on Park Street, closed in March 2020 and never reopened.

The library’s new south-end branch, set to open this fall, will be co-located with the new twin pad arena on Lansdowne Street. Earlier this year, a city official told the library board that there was “an expectation” that the new library branch would generate revenue by selling its name to a corporate sponsor. The library board considered spending its own money so that it could choose a name, but decided against that idea. But last week, Jones told councillors no sponsorship opportunity materialized, leading Leal to suggest keeping the name DelaFosse. “From time to time there is a real need to keep historical names,” Leal said. Jones responded that the library board will consider the mayor’s suggestion.

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