Comment
Pause
It’s a recurring nightmare. I am heading out of Wellington, up Belleville Road, past the Millennium Trail. Gone are the farm fields, once blanketed with snow in the winter, budding with fresh shoots in spring, lush with growth in the summer and golden after the harvest. Instead, in this dream state, the pastoral landscape has been displaced by grey strip plazas, gas stations, and fast food chains lining both sides of the street, all the way up to Gilead Road.
It is a hellscape found frequently on arterial roads around many cities—just beyond the traditional urban core. Mcdonald’s, Esso, Quick Stop, Dollar Store, vape shop, Burger King, Starbucks, Petro- Canada and on and on. Is this how planners and developers see the world? Is it what planners and developers envision for Belleville Road in Wellington? If so, why?
Perhaps it’s because we demand convenience, ease of access, and readyand- plentiful parking. We have created ugly canyons of fuel, Cheetos and burgers and chai lattes across North America to satisfy this need. We have traded natural beauty for wretched banality. Worse, in our hunger for sameness-of-experience and reliance upon our cars to get it, we have prodded our planners to replicate this hellscape over and over again.
It is hard to shake planners and developers from this rut—even when the underlying assumptions might be wobbly.
Planners are getting ready for Wellington to explode. From about 2,000 people today, they predict 8,600 folks in some undetermined future. It does not matter the time frame—it matters only that they prepare for the quadrupling of the village.
The assumption ignores the pressures that have constrained population growth in Prince Edward County for the past 130 years—and may do so again. Lack of services. Limited transit. Older demographic. Is this time different?
Why do planners believe it? Because developers have told them so. Developers (just one so far that we know of) have put up financial guarantees to ensure they get access to waterworks.
It is on this rickety basis that municipal planners imagine the future of Wellington. But markets change. Preferences change— lenders’ risk tolerance changes. Furthermore, developers have exit plans when markets change. Residents don’t.
The demand to live in Wellington has been strong for over a decade. But the current real estate market is softening. Is it just a blip? Or is it the end of a long upward run? What does a steep drop in prices in Toronto and Ottawa portend for the County? The pace of homebuilding? I don’t have answers to this question—nor do I believe those who say they do.
Yet, planners must plan. They would be roundly criticized if suddenly thousands of folks arrived and there was no plan. But perhaps they could be a bit more imaginative about how they envision commercial development—and a bit more thoughtful about the existing core. Maybe we should insist upon it.
For the foreseeable future—let’s say ten years—consider focusing commercial development in the core of the village. To do this, let us press pause on commercial development on the village edges for a decade. Monitor it. Review it every couple of years. Let’s not be reckless or inflexible.
But let us better understand the demand for commercial development. It is not obvious there is currently massive unmet demand for commercial space in the village. Empty stores on two of the four corners of the village’s main intersection. Another empty store on the edge of the village.
Yet, even as we are asked to talk about expanding commercial along Belleville Road, Shire Hall is erecting barriers to inhibit development and expansion in the village. Waterworks capacity has been allocated to development north of the Millennium Trail. Infill building has been put on hold. This must be fixed before we entertain any conversation about the necessity of commercial development on the edges.
Perhaps a fanciful suggestion: move Shire Hall planners to Wellington? Currently, the clerk’s department is stationed in the Town Hall. While it has been a pleasure to host them in our village for the past few months, perhaps they would consider trading places with the municipal planning team who work in the Edward Building.
Enable them to marinate in this place. There is no substitute for living in a community to understand the risks, challenges and opportunities it faces. To understand what matters. The history. The sensitive bits. The context.
Wellington stands at the cusp of something. I know not what it is—but it is more palpable now than in the past 20 years. The nature, shape, character and legacy of this community cannot be surrendered to an academic or bureaucratic exercise. It must be guided and informed by the folks who live here. Who work here. Who have invested here.
A 10-year pause in commercial development would give us the time to do so. In the meantime, we could measure on-the-ground progress—make a real-world assessment of the pace and likely trajectory of change in our community. It would be better than guessing.
Take a look at what Brooklyn did as the pressure mounted to turn this sleepy little village into a bedroom community off of the 407(?) they looked at what the housing stock of the village looked like and required that the developments echo what was already there. Brooklyn is not the same, but at least the developments fit better into the landscape than what we are seeing.
It is pretty easy to see that planners, developers, municipal councilors etc., cannot envision anything beyond the car-centric developments of the last 75 years. Jane Jacobs wrote of community in 1961 but it seems to have almost zero impact. Wellington needs to say goodbye to the small village atmosphere and say hello to subdivisions, pavement, and cars and trucks making the central core a clogged thoroughfare, not the center of a community.
Glad that I have lived when I have and will be gone and not have to see or experience it. I have always felt that Wellington was “huggable”. It will no longer be.