We’ve all played the board game Monopoly. The goal is to buy properties, build up houses and hotels and then collect rents from competing players. A game can drag on for an interminable time but typically the rich get richer until the poor finally go bust, after mortgaging or selling their properties to pay off debts.
Although the original game board featured streets in Atlantic City, regional variations, featuring other city’s place names, have since emerged. What if we played a real life game of NOTL monopoly?
Dice rolls randomly determine the game-pieces’ speed around the board. If you land in a bad space or draw an unlucky card you will be fined. The town recently reduced the maximum speed limits on urban area roads by 10 kph. While excessive speed leads to injuries and deaths, fines also raise revenues. In 2024 the automated Crossroads school safety zone speed camera grossed $134,484. Then Premier Doug Ford banned the much vandalized devices, ending this “cash grab” (the Premier’s label). Unfortunately speed enforcement by cops costs more than by automated cameras. Niagara Regional Police are demanding a 11.5% Budget increase this year.
The town also collects fines when other bylaws are broken. As of January 14, the builders of the new luxury hotel at Parliament Oak have been fined twenty-one times under the Town’s Administrative Monetary Penalty System (AMPS). These infractions result from enforcing By-law No. 3941-05, regulating site alteration activities, including the removal of topsoil, without an approved permit. But the maximum AMPS fine is only $500 per violation.
A corporation controlled by Benny Marotta, a multimillionaire developer, is building the luxury hotel. The adverse health and safety impacts of ignoring rules preventing environmental contamination or degradation can be as detrimental as roadway speeding. While evidence confirms that stricter speed limit enforcement reduces vehicle speeds, there is zero evidence that the “slap on the wrist” fines charged at Parliament Oak are effectively halting unlawful activities there In fact, the track record proves the opposite: eleven of the AMPS fines have accrued for violations since late December.
So drivers will continue paying more fines into the kitty than multimillionaire developers. But who has won the “free parking” prize lately? Why it’s that exact same multimillionaire developer. Niagara region—at the urging of our Lord Mayor and a town council majority— forgave a $900,000 development charge on the Parliament Oak hotel’s parking garage.
So, on balance, while we’ve fined the developer $11,500 in puny penalties, he has scooped up a huge $900,000 prize payout. The NOTL Residents Association filed a complaint about this with a referee (the Ontario Ombudsman), seeking its return, because changing rules in the middle of the game is never fair.
Next let’s inventory the property holdings on the NOTL game-board. The leading player is clearly Benny Marotta. So far he has amassed: The Rand Estate, two wineries (Stone Eagle and Two Sisters), two properties used as restaurants (The Old Winery and the 11th Post on Queen), two commercial plazas (one each in Virgil and St David’s), plus Firehall One on Queen St in old town. Plys parts of the old Mori Gardens nursery property.
His extensive web of land holdings also frustrates and imperils councillors complying with the code of conduct, in avoiding conflicts. Lord Mayor Zalepa declared a conflict because of his home’s proximity to Rand. Firehall One formerly hosted a restaurant managed by Counc. Maria Mavridis, after Marotta bought it from her father, becoming their landlord. Stone Eagle purchased land from the Cornerstone Community Church where Counc Erwin Wiens is a parishioner and his wife a Church Elder.
So where are the most valued NOTL properties? If Glencairn Hall is Boardwalk, then the neighbouring Larkin Estate is our Park Place. Marotta owns the Larkin Estate, adding a severed riverside segment, from neighbouring Glencairn, to it last August. Meanwhile a police arson investigation into the heritage designated Glencairn continues. Burning down a house isn’t an authorized Monopoly game move. But when a fine doesn’t fit the crime, players are sent directly to jail. They do not pass “GO”; they do not collect $10,000.
We NOTLers are learning a hard lesson here: When we play a game with the rules stacked against us, we are bound to lose, big time. If only we were just playing with Monopoly money.