I am a professional planner and a retired member of the Canadian Institute of Planners and the Ontario Professional Planners Institute. I formerly was a professor of the University of Guelph in the School of Rural Planning and Development.
In the years of community activity regarding the proposed location of this retail development next to two public cemeteries and the Ignatius Jesuit Centre I assisted in the OMB Hearing as an unpaid expert witness on behalf of Residents for Sustainable Development of which I was not a member. My status as an expert witness in this planning matter was accepted by the lawyer for 6 & 7 Developments and by the Chairman of the Hearing.
My observation and experience in municipal planning matters is that the vote of elected members of Council carries much more weight than the staff report. My opinion is that this Council should draw on the Members’ ethical commitments to this community, gather their values and their courage and decide to reject this staff report.
It is sometimes said that planning is all about politics, but I would disagree. I feel that planning is about good decision-making about a community. Good decision-making is based on informed judgement and is based on community values and goals for the whole community.
A zoning amendment tends to consider only the property considered in the application and perhaps its effects on immediately adjacent land uses in terms of direct physical effects such as noise, sight, and traffic volume. Especially it considers whether the investor will make a profit from the development. It is planning by numbers, like painting landscapes on velvet. I suggest that planning a community is much more than this.
In the OMB hearing about the early application by 6 & 7 Development, any attempt to speak about the potential of that location to attract other retail uses was halted by the Chairman, because he said that hearing was about the single application before the hearing, i.e., the Wal-Mart store. It was very limited. Already we see an application for expansion of that store and for other retail uses, exactly what was expected by the opponents.
The application is not only about this property but about the process of community building over the next twenty-five years and beyond, under the policy framework which we now have in Ontario and Guelph.
My position as a planner in the OMB process on 6 and 7 Development was that the proposed use was incompatible with the surrounding land uses of the cemeteries and spiritual retreats at the Ignatius Jesuit Centre. These land uses have their focus on spiritual matters, not on consumerism and commercial profit. The pre-existing land uses have values and goals which were entirely different and incompatible with the values and goals of 6 & 7 Development. Incompatibility in my professional opinion was far more and far higher than physical effects such as drainage, noise and appearance. The planning consultant paid by the developer had a different opinion, as did Mr. Boxma.
The Ontario legislation called the Places to Grow Act is not discretionary but is mandatory. This Act requires Guelph to perform certain planning steps before approving the proposed development application. Until Guelph has achieved those required standards of density and city-wide development such as the city’s downtown future this application is premature.
This location on the north edge of the City does not need more commercial development to serve the needs of the local residents. There is very little local population. Before that need should be considered and approved, there are major parts of our city which already have very significant amounts of residential development with very few commercial services available, meaning that accessibility to necessary services is unfairly limited in those neighbourhoods.
I draw your attention to the submission of analysis by Susan Watson, for your serious consideration, and especially to her references to the CIP Statement of Values and the Code of Practice. SR