By Pepper Parr
June 9th, 2025
BURLINGTON, ON
The discussion was related to the development planned for 2083 Lakeshore Road. This is the property that is currently the parking lot opposite Emmas Back Porch.
Second from the left – front row.
Entrance on the south side facing the lake.
Mayor Marianne Meed Ward made the following comment:
“Thank you, Chair. I will be brief. I will not be supporting the recommendation, although I do want to thank staff for all their work on this and the applicants for for all of their work trying to get to some consensus on the few items that were outstanding.
“I think this is overdevelopment for this area. I believe that for a very long time, this will create a canyon of towers on both sides of a very narrow road, Old Lakeshore Road, right in proximity to our waterfront. I understand that there may be folks who think that the ship has sailed on this issue, but I am not going to give it any wind.
“I believe that this is not the right development here. My vision for downtown is not to see this type of height and density; it better belongs at the Major Transit Service Areas (MTSA) locations- where we have now shifted our urban growth center to.
“I maintain that vision. I will stand by that vision. I will fight that vision and I will continue to be consistent in what I think the downtown should be.
Councillor Kearns followed the Mayor with her comment – a tad cheeky. She has been smacking the Mayor more often these days.
The captain here said Kearns
“The captain here, through the chair, the ship has sailed, and here’s why. I went through this planning file with deep scrutiny, and I think that the commissioner can attest, we spent about an hour reviewing some of my initial questions, and I circulated many to staff in advance as well.
Here’s what I was looking for. I was looking for a defensible way out of this particular application, recognizing the contextual area in which it’s been landed. That’s why I referenced the provincial planning policy statement. I referenced the MTSA justification, the UGC.
“I asked how that could still hold. I asked about the leading policy context, and I asked about how a proposed scale intensification of the surrounding area affected the staff recommendation for approval before us today. And I was satisfied with those answers.
“I asked what would preclude the proposal to range from 10 to 15 storeys, and was met with an appropriate answer that was steeped in that planning, planning policy context. I went back to the concept plan. I checked the amenity spaces to see if there was any gapping, on mixed use, on amenities, on parking and any of those types of things, and I was remiss to not find any.
“That is why it is a complete report. I asked questions about the floor area ratio to see if it was outside an acceptable standard. And really it is 1.11 to 1.16, which is just a shortening of the parcel, but the same calculation holds the instruction to refer this file to staff to continue working on it, resulting in essentially immaterial changes – they are immaterial and almost imperceptible to the built form context and to the neighbouring areas.
“I don’t work on my personal opinions in this role. I work on expert, technical staff, recommendations and reports and supporting policy pieces. That is why I have been led to a supportive position on this file.”
“I talked deeply about the infrastructure, and I worked with the regional commissioners as well at the region about the holding zone placed in regards to junction street wastewater pumping station.
“I also consulted with the applicant on if they were satisfied that they could make efforts to release that holding zone as well. I asked questions of finance. Sorry, maybe not finance, but to finance through the Commissioner on how it may or may not affect DCS. And I asked questions of the region on how a holding zone would affect things like site plan, occupancy, etc. I worked very hard on behalf of the community to scrutinize this particular file and the place that I continue to land, although maybe outside of my personal opinions.
“I don’t work on my personal opinions in this role. I work on expert, technical staff, recommendations and reports and supporting policy pieces. That is why I have been led to a supportive position on this file.
“I would like to have a very different vision. I would like to have a completely different context. But the reality is, is that that is not where we sit today, and we would be leading ourselves to a tribunal if we failed to approve this development. I can’t speak about that, because that’s a legislative process; it would be extremely difficult to go against staff, technical experts.”
Councillor Nissan was up next:
“My personal point of view, and that which I brought forward, was not supporting tall buildings that were too high and in the wrong places. And at the time, what was going on in the football would have been the wrong place for such a tall building. Unfortunately, through OLT decisions, primarily, it has become clear, as demonstrated through the presentation, that the reality on the ground is not what I came for, not what I would like it to be, but we need to be real and be grounded in and what’s actually occurring.
Councillor Nisan: “The context has shifted.”
“In addition, we have a housing crisis in our province, including in Burlington. We have a staff. We have staff supporting it with their best expert advice, and they haven’t supported every development downtown, far from it. I think of the Waterfront Hotel development, where we were successful, but unfortunately being surrounded by buildings of a similar height.
“It is a reality. The context has shifted, as noted in the report. This will not in my opinion, be something we will be able to prevent this. Furthermore, we need the units, every extra unit in our community has an impact on supply, which is the only real way that we’re going to have more affordable housing is by increasing supply.
“So it would be one thing if staff weren’t supporting it be one thing if the immediate context were different. We fought those battles with success at the Waterfront Hotel, but not so much elsewhere. So indeed, the ship has sailed on this location. But we need to also ensure that we have enough housing for the next generations in our community, and whatever the cost of these units are, the supply is, what will having supplies? What will make that happen? So I will be supporting this.”
Some observations: If Councillor Nisan thinks the development is going to include affordable housing, one has to wonder how much he knows about the developments he is approving.
It was quite clear that the Mayor and Councillor Kearns were going to have a go at each other. What is motivating Kearns? She likes the look of the bling the Mayor has when she puts on the chain of office.
Expect to see more of this kind of behaviour.
Mayor Med Ward: “I maintain that vision. I will stand by that vision. I will fight that vision and I will continue to be consistent in what I think the downtown should be”,
For Meed Ward to issue the declarative statements –“ I maintain that vision. I will stand by that vision. I will fight that vision and I will continue to be consistent in what I think the downtown should be”, – has to be seen as a little on the self serving side. Back in 2010 she got herself elected on a Save the Waterfront platform. A little late in the game to bring back that vision.
If we can have these ridiculous hi rise condominium ghettos filled mostly with useless 500 SF units next to our neighborhoods adjacent to GO Stations then let’s build them on Lakeshore Road.
There’s a huge difference between being located at the GO stations or downtown on Lakeshore Road as to the appropriateness of high rises. The GO station locations have Go train, GO bus, City bus transit connectivity. Only the municipal bus service is available downtown at Lakeshore Road.
I can assure you that the roads are car to car around the Appleby GO that I live near today never mind some of the ridiculous planned developments so frankly I do not differentiate or agrre The main bus terminal is downtown too. Our ridiculous politicians (all levels)can reap the seed that they sow.
Lisa Kearns told it like it is. This ship sailed years ago when past councils didn’t have the foresight to protect this area.
How many pre-campaign runs will our Mayor indicate that she will stop the over intensification of the waterfront? Knowing full well that she cannot.
I urge residents not “to drink the Kool-Aid” yet again.
I guess it was naive of the Mayor and the rest of us to believe the OLT would be, as advertised, an impartial tribunal, that would weigh the pros and cons of a planning application taking into account the municipality’s official plan, its zoning and other bylaws, and last but not least the desires of the municipality’s residents.
You have quoted politician Councilor Lisa Kearns. In 2018 did she not run on the same platform as the Mayor? No criticism for her or the other 4 councilors who all backed the Mayor’s approach as being viable?
Having just sat in as an observer on a six day OLT hearing for a 12 storey inappropriate condo building wedged into a constrained wedge of property on Guelph Line near Palmer Drive in our neighbourhood, I have come to believe that no area of the urban part of our City is safe from the greed and ego-building drive of developers in today’s world to build high edifices where the majority of Burlingtonians do not want them.
It matters not how or if the site is designated for high density growth. The developer’s experts will suggest it should be in the name of the Province and the need for more housing. The word “affordable” is seldom used because no successful developer wants to build such a building that can’t make them a huge profit. The Province holds all the cards and our Premier just wants to build, build, build, with no constraints from current planning rules, neighbourhood views and context, species at risk, floodplain and flooding concerns or adding to traffic congestion that is already bad and only worsens with all these high buildings.
I can’t get back that week of my life I spent viewing the detailed and repetitive back and forth arguments of the hearing I viewed. I was just a spectator. We all are spectators today, even our Mayor. We may think we have a say, but we have no power to stop the destruction of our City’s urban landscape with over-intensification simply because we are instructed to do so from the powers above us because it seems everyone wants to live in Burlington and we must accommodate them. The meaning of “freedom of choice” has taken on a new meaning from when I was growing up and I’m still trying to understand just what that meaning is today.
The problem with Meed Ward is that she is rhetoric and display over substance. Her “vision” statements sound wonderful as campaign hustle but they are meaningless. That is your “vision” madam – so what? You can’t do a single thing to achieve it and you’ve completely mishandled the downtown/waterfront file. Sometimes I wonder whether Meed Ward, in a haze of narcissistic delusion, actually believes that just her rhetoric should be enough. It is time for her to take her game somewhere else – anywhere else.