By Pepper Parr
May 4th, 2022
BURLINGTON, ON
While it may be that the battle for saving the land that the Waterfront Hotel sits on the area that is known as the “football” is still very much at risk.
Nick Carnicelli put together plans for a structure that is nice enough from an architectural point of view – some just thought it was inappropriate for that space.
The site is at the eastern end of the football and would become the entrance to the downtown core – not something this council is prepared to do at this point.
The city doesn’t feel design is appropriate for the location and they have not had a chance to prepare a staff report. Good arguments but will they be heard at the OLT
The Carnicelli development went to the Ontario Land Tribunal for lack of a decision from the city. At the time the Urban Growth centre was put under an Interim Control bylaw which put a halt to all development in the UGC.
Council went into a Closed Session this afternoon to discuss this and then came out and delivered not only the address of the property they were talking about but what some of the issues were.
After that some of the council members chose to clap themselves on the back for making the change in the way they report out on Closed sessions.
The big big issue on how this development is treated at the OLT is the impact it will have on the football.
Ignore the subject site notation. The development in question is at the right hand side of that football shape – where Old Lakeshore Road and Lakeshore Road meet.
That land has not had the benefit of any really progressive thinking – the developers spotted the opportunity six years ago – bought up the land and came back with incredible developments. That use of the word incredible was not meant as a positive statement.
This is a model of what the CORE Development Group wanted to build. There development is to the immediate west of the Carnicelli site – which is not shown in this model.
Meed Ward based her first campaign on saving the waterfront. She hasn’t done all that well with Spencer Smith Park and the Waterfront Hotel site – perhaps she will pivot to the football and set out to save that.
I`m having trouble understanding why this is so difficult.
It reminds me of a story where a truck went under a bridge and got stuck. Everyone was called out, Fire Dept. Police. City Engineers, National Guard.
Everyone there scratching their heads for hours, ideas were thrown around from tearing down the bridge to dismantling the truck. Along comes an eight year old eating an ice cream. He looks at the situation and asks the Lady in charge what the problem was. She ignores him. So he asks again what is the problem. The lady looks down at him and say`s can`t you see the truck is stuck. He looks at her as he licked his ice cream and calmly responds. Just let some air out of the tires.
Provincial Housing policies should be simple. Decide where you want something built and what exactly you want built there.
We have an election coming up. The party that gets elected gets to make the rules. We then must live by them. Penny knows her stuff.
Considering covid has been around for a while. I would have to say Ford`s Ontario is in pretty good shape. Are you aware of any of the Provincial Parties that are intent on de-intensifying Ontario. This issue has to be simplified.
If there is too much development in Ontario and Ford is not running the economics of the Province properly. Should housing prices not be falling instead of skyrocketing.
Usually thats a pretty good indicator. At a glance I`m seeing a lot of PC signs on lawns. Who knows.
What does this accomplish? Does it matter? The proposed 27 storey building immediately to the west was just approved.
Was it not the Liberals that brought in all this build up not out intensification policies. Sorry my bad you are suggesting voting for the NDP. Good luck.
The former Liberal government reformed the OLT (previously known as the OMB) so it would have to be more balanced in its adjudications and less developer biased. This Ford government rolled back those reforms to the benefit of the developer community.
It is refreshing to see municipalities starting to push back at the province in cases where they have a fighting chance. Hamilton has told Ford to go suck lemons, and Burlington can do the same, while reminding voters that the way to solve these problems in the long run is to toss the PCs out of office. Remember, one of Ford’s first acts in 2018 was to unwind the progress made in taming the OMB, and brought back worse to the benefit of his developer buddies. His use of MZOs to crush years of local planning, and the desperate rush to build the 413, are egregious examples. The solution is at hand in a month, folks, and we can worry about who is best to run Burlington later on.
YES, Dump Ford. He is no friend of municipalities or their residents. Do not be bought off by license plate rebates and the like. They are just bribesto make you ignore the awful policies he and his cronies carry out. Under paying nurses, mismanagement of LTC facilities, pandemic flip flopping mismanagement, highway 413, and of course unfettered land development.
How many times can residents drink the Kool-Aid ( I am the first to admit that I did on 2 separate occasions?.
Campaign promises to Save the Waterfront, or control the over-development of the core which were the battle cry for the last 2 elections were simply promises made that could never be fulfilled.
Let’s hope that “Saving the area known as the Football” doesn’t become the rallying cry for this campaign election.
It is the Province that decides on matters such as this with Municipalities having to fall in line.