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Mississauga-fication
The changes Kaitlin wants to make to its plans in Wellington are so big that they require alterations to the County’s Official Plan. They are so broad and sweeping as to require a brand new zoning category for this community—Gateway Mixed-Use. It is a flashing red light.
Where once developers paid lip service to the values and traditions of Prince Edward County, they now appear to have dropped such pretense altogether. As is apparent in Kaitlin’s reworked plans for Wellington, they intend to re-create the GTA in our community.
How do we know this?
When a developer wants to make big changes to its plans—particularly those approved by Council—it is required to compile a list of documents to justify its reasoning. It has to explain why it is necessary and how the proposed changes will continue to uphold the interests and character of the village and the County.
Kaitlin’s justification is accidentally revealing.
In its Planning Justification Report Addendum, prepared by Weston Consulting, the report addresses a variety of subjects, including the village’s natural heritage, waterworks and transportation systems. For as the Provincial Policy specifies, “Efficient use should be made of existing and planned infrastructure, including through the use of transportation demand management strategies, where feasible.”
Here I quote directly from the report on why the developer is seeking to change its Wellington plans: “As stated earlier, the proposed redevelopment will provide for transitsupportive densities that will ensure the efficient use of existing and planned transit infrastructure in the area, including the Finch West LRT, the Sheppard Subway Extension, and plentiful local TTC bus routes.” (Emphasis added.)
It would be remarkable were it true—that dropping strip malls on both sides of Belleville Road might provide handy access to the Finch West LRT or “plentiful” TTC buses. Quite a trick. But unlikely.
It is, rather, a magnificent Freudian slip. An oversight for sure. A paragraph lifted from another of the consultant’s reports, or more likely a template that someone forgot to revise. (Except for the fact that this particular report was submitted seven months ago. Some time has passed to fix a pretty big mistake. But it wasn’t.)
A more perfect metaphor of the developer’s intentions in Wellington may not exist. Kaitlin and its consultants understand the GTA. When they venture out to the countryside, they build what they know—Finch Street West, Downsview and TTC routes.
It isn’t Prince Edward County. It isn’t Wellington. It isn’t our community.
We must resist with all our might the developer’s ambition to transplant the GTA into the County.
Thankfully, Shire Hall’s planning department has assured The Times that there will be a public meeting—via a future Planning and Development Meeting—to consider Kaitlin’s Official Plan and zoning changes.
The other big pus-filled boil of a concern oozing from the consultant’s error-pocked report, however, is this: Does anybody actually read planning reports? Do they matter? Or is it all just a tick-the-box exercise?
In its cover letter, the consultant emphasizes that it has provided 16 documents to support its resubmission in Wellington. Is anyone turning past the first page? Or is it all about the volume of paper? Planning decisions made by the pound?
County values and traditions matter. They are essential to how we think of the place. Core to who we are as residents. We are at risk of seeing them dissolved into the Mississauga-fication of the place.
Our only defence is the Shire Hall planning staff, elected council and our own voices. We need these voices, now more than ever, to step up, steel their spine and clearly enunciate the terms and conditions by which developers do business in our community.
It starts by denouncing changes to our Official Plan. It extends to rejecting made-in-Toronto zoning. There can be no more concessions or giveaways.
We must make a clear and determined statement: We welcome development and investment in Prince Edward County. But it will happen on our terms.
We need leadership that will go toe-to-toe with the powerful—not in fear, not in anger or denial, but clear-eyed about the things they have been entrusted to protect.
There are non-negotiable values that define Prince Edward County. We must speak them, over and over again, with confidence and conviction.
Otherwise, we risk disappearing into the grey smudge that is the GTA.
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