| Advertisement |
|
|
|
ACCUSATIONS AGAINST THE PROVINCE AND THE CITY
|
by
Don McLean
April 8 - 14, 2010 |
Both provincial and city officials are being slammed over the so–called aerotropolis reserve. City staff want to label about 1400 acres of rural land for future employment uses, a clause that the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing wants removed from the official plan to avoid speculation on the food production area. Bob Bratina suggested staff have “almost been intransigent” in more than three years of battles with the province over the size of the proposed airport employment growth district, despite public opposition to using agricultural lands for industrial purposes.
We had the big meeting in Ancaster when the place was packed with residents who were opposed to this,” Bratina recalled, “And we were assured, no the province, it’s just a matter of grammar and adverbs here and there.” The reference is to a June 2005 special meeting of the city planning committee attended by over 400 people trying to stop a 3000 acre urban boundary expansion that was subsequently blocked by the Ontario Municipal Board, despite then–mayor Larry Di Ianni’s assurance that a provincial letter telling the city to stop was just the opinion of a single bureaucrat. The aerotropolis is supposed to accommodate much of the city’s future job growth, but Bratina is worried that “we’re actually land–banking for big development firms” and the airport area lands will get converted to residential sprawl if the city is allowed to bring them inside the urban boundary. “Future development is in the hands of developers and the pressure in the province of Ontario is for lands for residential development,” he noted. “Could these lands that we insist on reserving for employment ever, ever in some way or other be rezoned for residential purposes?”
City planner Joanne Hickey–Evans acknowledged that “there is no never”, but explained that only the city can expand the urban boundary, since the province has blocked developers from directly using this option. “So first and foremost individual applications for any type of development cannot come forward to expand the urban boundary without the city actually doing the work,” she explained. “So the way it would work then is if the city then went through a process, identified future lands for employment, and somebody wants residential, then they would have to appeal it to the Ontario Municipal Board and then try their case at the board.” Dave Mitchell, on the other hand, is upset that the province has forced the city to cut its aerotropolis plans in half and won’t allow immediate development to proceed on the rest. “What the province is trying to do to us here, does appear that it doesn’t really want Hamilton to be successful and open for business to the real world,” he declared. “We need to show leadership, economic development wise, to the world out there that Hamilton’s international airport is open for business.” Mitchell thinks the reserve clause should stay in the official plan, and wants those lands immediately available if some business takes an interest in locating along the Highway 6 extension south of the airport. “We may get lucky enough to have a company come along and say, ‘I like Hamilton, I like the access of a road that can give me 400 series highway access and I want to build another state–of–the–art bakery; I want to build another state–of–the–art facility for manufacturing windmill blades for modern production of electricity,’ and so on,” he argued. “The province is forcing us to eliminate that.” The city’s response to the provincial comments on the draft was delayed at last week’s council meeting to consider more information.
|
Share on
 |
No comments yet... be the first! |
|
