By Pepper Parr
April 6th, 2019
BURLINGTON, ON
The two pictures below tell the story – the first is what is in place today in the eastern part of the city. A plaza that has been allowed to deteriorate to the point where more than half of the units were empty.
The second is the first version of what the owners of the property showed the public at open houses last August. The people who live in the neighbourhoods are up in arms.
A drab rundown property on Lakeshore Road in the eastern reaches of the city might get a huge makeover if the developer can convince the planners and then city council that their idea is beneficial to everyone.
Massive in scale, overwhelming in scope – but it does go some distance to meeting the intensification targets.
The city went to considerable lengths to pull in feed back from the public. Two packed meetings took place at which the public had a chance to look at drawings and ideas put together by the Planning Department.
The public had hours to go over drawings and talk through ideas with city hall staff. Why is it that the ideas never seem to be reflected in the proposal the developers put forward?
The room was packed – the public interest was there.
Few if any of those ideas made it to the plan the developer brought forward in July and August.
A required Statutory Public meeting is to take place on Tuesday evening at city hall.
City staff will present a report to provide background information for the statutory public meeting required under the Planning Act for Official Plan and Zoning By-law amendment applications. The report provides an overview of the proposed applications, an outline of the applicable policies and regulations and a summary of technical and public comments received to date.
There is a chance that the developer will have heard some of what the public had to say and maybe moderate the size and scale.
Some of the early thinking about development ideas for the site had the city contributing the arena and the parkland on the north to a project that would pull together the area, the plaza and the Burloak Park to the south.
The original design put together when the idea of getting something done to the plaza pulled together the park-arena on the north side with the upgraded Burloak Park on the south side. Some of the original design work done then appears below as well.
Carrie DeMunck
Carrie De Munch, a resident in the eastern part of the city who was active in one of the ward 5 election campaigns said: “Lakeside Plaza is a huge concern for all of the east end of Burlington, particularly for our senior friends who reside in the immediate area. The redevelopment of this plaza will impact all of the south of Burlington, and those from southwest Oakville that utilize our corner of Burlington, and also those beyond our western borders who commute along Burlington Lakeshore daily at all hours to get to their workplaces and back.
This development is not part of the area covered by the Interim Control by law that has frozen development in the downtown core.
What happened? I quote from page 29 and 30 of the developer’s proposal under the heading of Public Consultation:
“…We anticipate that a local community meeting will be held following the application submission…to present a master plan and engage the community for comments and input…We will summarize all public input through the community engagement process and identify how community input has been addressed with updates and changes…The consultation strategy described herein will ensure that members of the public are given an opportunity to review, understand and comment on the proposal.”
Sounds wonderful, doesn’t it? Obviously, that didn’t happen! Did they address community concerns after the Open House sessions? No. There have been no changes in the original proposal presented to residents thus far. A community meeting for January (2019) shown in a timeline at the August Open House never happened.
The developer’s planners spent 3 years engaging with the city planning staff, making presentations to council and convincing all involved at City Hall that it was the most fantastic, enlightened plan for this property. The developer’s planners were so effective in this regard that they were able to shape the new Official Plan policies for Neighbourhood Centres to perfectly suit and allow their proposal. The outrageous number of amendments they request are mind-boggling with umpteen bylaw modifications needed. This proposal is over-development on steroids! The Neighbourhood Centre Policy needs to be revised to distinguish between the larger and smaller sites to prevent future development proposals from ruining residential neighbourhoods similar to this east end Lakeshore site.
Something similar is being proposed in Aldershot, where almost an entire survey of inhabited townhouses is going to be bulldozed over to make way for super high density high rise condos. Now it’s not even empty lots, or plazas, but communities themselves, that are being displaced for the all mighty dollar. I’d like to hear what the Mayor thinks of all this.
The city planning department with agreement – allowed the developer to develop on city land – when asking an elected official – to comment ” the (the developer) can proposed anything they want” – there seemed no concern that limited valuable green space (parkland) in the city was being account for by a private developer – we asked if my neighbour proposed to extend his garage into my kitchen on property I rightfully owned – if that was okay 🙁
Another super high density mess, adding to the never-ending overcrowding of the city.