Biker clubhouse comes tumbling down

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News - MCs in the News

Posted By PETER DOWNS , STANDARD STAFF


He had a black mask around his eyes, but the lone tenant evicted Monday from the former Outlaws biker gang clubhouse was no bandit.

As an excavator's steel-toothed bucket ripped into the Oakdale Avenue building to begin its demolition, the pudgy raccoon darted out of an upstairs room and scampered part way down a drainpipe to a second-storey window.

The animal, obviously startled to see his adopted home being torn down, clung to a steel grate over the window for nearly half an hour before he finally made his way to the ground safely.

"I guess he can't read the No Trespassing signs," joked Niagara Regional Police Sgt. Brian Ash, who used to belong to the service's biker enforcement unit.

It was Ash who put up the signs that have warned people to steer clear of the former biker party pad after police seized the clubhouse eight years ago as part of a provincewide crackdown on the gang.

The dilapidated building at 144 Oakdale Ave. has been held by the provincial government ever since under proceeds of crime legislation.

The government began tearing down the bunker-like eyesore Monday morning and expects it to be completely razed over the next couple of days.

"It's a good ending for the community," said Ash, who was part of the team that shut down the clubhouse. "It's symbolic and it shows the good result that came out of the investigation."

A two-man crew using an excavator began demolition about 9:30 a.m., ripping down a heavy steel gate that sealed off access into the property's backyard.

The crew made slow progress through the morning, tearing apart a small back room that was cantilevered from the second floor.

The first major hole punched into the back of the building exposed a second-storey bathroom with yellow and blue tile.

"It kinda makes you curious as to what's going to fall out of the walls. You never know," said neighbour Wendy Haywood, who watched the demolition from the rear yard of her house two doors down the street.

Haywood, a longtime Merritton resident who's lived on Oakdale for four years, said she's glad the rundown building will soon be gone.

"It's an eyesore. It's about time they cleaned this area up. It's got a bad reputation because of that place," she said.

Pat Luthra, who has lived a couple doors away from the clubhouse since 1991, was also hoping new housing will eventually be built on the property.

"I'm glad this is going to go," he said. "My property value has never gone up the whole time I've been here. It hasn't moved."

But Luthra had nothing bad to say about the bikers who used to hang out at the old clubhouse.

He recalled an incident when one of the Outlaws members chased down a speeding driver on his motorcycle and warned him not to drive so quickly on the street because there were young kids living nearby, including Luthra's son.

"They were good people when they were here," he said.

But not all neighbours shared the same sentiment.

Ash, who now works out of the NRP's Niagara Falls detective office, said police frequently heard from nearby residents who weren't happy to have members of a biker gang living in their midst.

"Neighbours complained a lot about the parties and just the fact that they knew that it was an Outlaws motorcycle gang that occupied it and the threat that that presented," he said.

A year ago, criminal charges against former Outlaws president Mario Parente were dropped when the Crown's key witness refused to testify.

When Parente was arrested in 2002, he was listed on the deed to the Oakdale clubhouse as president of the numbered company that has owned the building since 1991.

Parente said in published

reports last spring that he had quit the Outlaws, but the numbered company remains listed as the building's owner on City of St. Catharines property tax documents.

The Ministry of the Attorney General said civil forfeiture proceedings are still ongoing before the courts, but that the registered owner of the building has "consented" to the building's demolition.

"Once the building is demolished, the property will be sold by public sale and the net proceeds paid into court pending completion of the civil forfeiture proceedings," ministry spokesman Brendan Crawley said in an e-mail.

The Outlaws' clubhouse may soon be a memory, but the biker gang continues to survive in Ontario.

At last count, the organization had 46 active members, a member of the NRP biker enforcement unit said.
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