MELFORT — Melfort council unanimously voted to reject a request to allow a brokerage firm to set up shop at the Melfort Wellness Centre.
Jesse Rudge, a partner with Avatex Devcorp Inc., the private investor of the centre, argued that setting up an Edward Jones should be accepted as an auxiliary use.
“Yes, there are a list of a bunch of other medical uses that could go in there, but I don’t know what is considered an auxiliary use then,” he said.
Rudge said Edward Jones approached Avatex after they put an ad in a newspaper.
“While we sympathize with Avatex and the challenges they had with respect to the Wellness Centre, the original intent of the Wellness Centre was to have direct medical services involved in that building and council didn’t view a brokerage firm as a direct medical service,” said Rick Lang, Melfort’s mayor. “That was the primary reason why that got defeated.”
Lang said the service “didn’t fit”.
“You can try and make anything fit if you stretch the rubber band far enough, but the reality is really from a logistics point of view, a common sense point of view, and strict parameters with respect to what medical services are, it just didn’t fit.”
Rudge said the council’s Jan. 14 decision was “frustrating.”
