A new plan

It has been five years since residents were asked what they believe makes Wellington a special place—why they feel so passionately about this village and their community. In March 2010, more than 100 village residents filed into the lunchroom at CML Snider school to consider the future of Wellington. They worked into the night, writing down the values, traditions, natural features and stories that define this community’s unique character. They were asked to share their dreams and ambitions for Wellington for the next 20 years. The product of that work is now complete. The village has a new plan.

Strictly speaking, the Wellington Secondary Plan is a land use planning tool, a blueprint of sorts to guide new development. It helps designers of waterworks and community infrastructure expand and adapt in intelligent and efficient ways. It is also used to ensure new growth is compatible with, and ideally complementary to, the existing village. And that new development doesn’t fundamentally alter the character that makes Wellington a treasured place to live.

But a village plan is much more than a set of rules and prescriptions, just as Wellington is much more than a collection of houses and buildings. The Secondary Plan is meant to be the encapsulation of the idea of Wellington. It is a document that proclaims our shared hopes and dreams for this village, written down, for all to see and observe. It is our way to protect this idea.

This plan will be tested soon enough.

The Wellington Secondary Plan speaks plainly about nurturing and preserving the downtown commercial core of the village. The plan’s guiding policies urge planners to concentrate shopping, business, office, tourism and storefront creative rural economy uses in the village core. It also encourages the adaptation of existing buildings for new purposes and complementary development on vacant lots in the village core.

You can see where this is going.

In the Plan’s implementation policies, the document says council shall recognize the village core as the primary traditional main street shopping, business, office, and tourism centre of the community. Further, that council shall ensure future development is focused here, and intensification shall be encouraged.

“Shall” is an important word in this context. Council cannot skip lightly over these words. They are not suggestions; they are directions.

So what does all this mean against the backdrop of the looming demolition of the convenience store and neighbouring building at the intersection of Main and Wharf Streets? The County’s works department wants to get out from under the liability exposure of a structure built above Lane Creek. It is a reasonable concern. The department has proposed a small park, perhaps a couple of parking spots at the village’s main intersection—at the crossroads of the village core.

But this notion runs entirely counter to the Wellington Secondary Plan, enacted by this municipality last week.

The plan is clear on this point. It directs planners and council to intensify retail, commercial and residential uses in Wellington’s core. That means you don’t erase buildings that have stood on this corner for 117 years. It means you don’t knock out a tooth from Wellington core streetscape without replacing it. It means you don’t remove retail, commercial and residential space from the village core.

The Wellington Secondary Plan was five years in the making. This was partly because it hadn’t been updated in a couple of decades. But mostly it was because the framers wanted to be sure the document would have meaning and relevance for many years. That it was durable.

They listened to the community, they heard from council and the province. John Uliani was the point man for the agency tasked with the development of the plan. John remarked at the 2010 workshop that he had never seen such enthusiastic resident participation, even in much larger communities.

Drafts went back forth many times, until the Plan was solid and reflective of the values of its participants.

It is a document developed and written to stand the test of time. It has been wrung free of momentary impulses or trends. It is meant to guide planners, council members and government officials today, tomorrow and a decade from now. It is the sum of the collective hopes and dreams of Wellington’s residents.

Council must carefully consider its decision for the main intersection of Wellington in the context of the Wellington Secondary Plan. Its track record for planning and heritage preservation isn’t strong. Should it choose to ignore the village plan, it might as well chuck the document into Lane Creek and writeoff the hundreds of thousands of dollars spent to create it.

Council will have lost any authority to insist that others follow policies prescribed in a plan it has chosen to ignore?

rick@wellingtontimes.ca