Just when many may have thought that Wal-Mart was old news, another public meeting has been held and once again it was standing room only.
This time, not content with a shopping palace one and a half times the size of anything else in this city, the company wants to expand its existing megastore and turn the entire Woodlawn Road and Woolwich Street corner into a power centre. Oh, and let’s forget about any of this mixed-use nonsense called for by the municipal and provincial planners.
Surprise. Not really. It has been clear from Day 1, a full 13 years ago now, that a power centre — and all the revenues from tenants’ fees that come with it — is what this development has been about, but no one takes any pleasure from saying I told you so.
You can get most things in this world if you can afford the lawyers, but this time it may not be so easy. While the developer’s manifesto produced by the city’s commercial policy review process under the previous council recommended the corner be set aside for future development, it didn’t say when. The time frame covered by the review takes us to 2021. It’s 2007, and a cursory glance around town will tell you we have more than enough commercial development in the north.
You have to feel for the long-suffering residents in new houses in the west, east and south ends.
It was bad enough that the store wars battle dragged out the resolution of the Wal-Mart appeal to the Ontario Municipal Board for years and that the uncertainty of that issue meant practically no one was building stores anywhere in Guelph. Now if the Woodlawn/Woolwich power centre goes ahead, all those stores who may have located in the areas where all the new homes are located may feel pressured to set up shop in the north, further isolating these under-serviced new suburbs.
Allowing more commercial development on this site now would only delay commercial development in areas where shopping and services are desperately needed. The far south end finally has a shopping centre, along with a grocery store, so there’s room for optimism there. But the west end is still underserviced as is the east end.
And who wants an expansion in the north end, anyway, now that they have their Wal-Mart store? Other than the earnest folks in suits who were paid to speak in favour, not one citizen spoke in support — not one. Maybe the increased traffic that recently led to a petition from apartment residents in the area was a factor. And whether or not their hitherto unpublicized appeals for a traffic light are answered, we can all be sure there will be no less traffic if this thing is allowed to morph into Square One.
What’s a progressive council to do? The people spoke unequivocally last November when the blatantly pro-Wal-Mart councillors and mayor were turfed out unceremoniously. The system still favours the big guy, however, so we can be sure the company and its developer will take us to the Ontario Municipal Board again if they don’t like what they hear, as they did last time a council decision went against them.
So we need to be careful to cross the t’s and dot the i’s here.
Yes, we have all the usual and logical arguments that were made again at last week’s public meeting, as they were in past big-box encounters. Those arguments didn’t impress the Ontario Municipal Board chair last time around, so I am not sure if they, alone, will find traction this time. Maybe we need more.
This city has recently undertaken a development priorities plan to control how residential growth should take place and in what order. It would only be prudent therefore to undertake a similar exercise for commercial development, to ensure services are located where people live and to reduce the environmental impact of people accessing those services.
If that exercise shows other development should take priority over the north, then Wal-Mart as a responsible corporate citizen, should be prepared to wait its turn. BB
Ben Bennett represented Residents for Sustainable Development at the Ontario Municipal Board, trying to stop Wal-Mart from building a store at the corner of Woodlawn Road and Woolwich Street.