Our shoreline in the Old Lakeshore Road area of our downtown waterfront is not protected from development, as we’ve been led to believe, nor are the heritage buildings along the shore safe from demolition.
The Save Our Waterfront movement has been raising concerns about our weakened shoreline protection for a year now – ever since current city council removed the 20m setback from our own bylaws, inside of which no development is supposed take place. The rationale for removing the setbacks: Conservation Halton governs shoreline protection; they’ve got our back. This was a double regulation. Or so we were told.
Fast forward to last week, when the director of planning, Bruce Krushelnicki, told the Burlington Waterfront Access and Protection Advisory committee it’s possible a 3-4 storey building could go on the vacant waterfront lot beside Emma’s Back Porch – even though almost the entire lot is within the setback supposedly governed by Conservation Halton (and no longer governed by our own bylaws).
The penny finally dropped for the downtown councillor, who has been saying this land is undevelopable and has waved off Save Our Waterfront’s concerns as misinformed fear-mongering.
“I thought you couldn’t develop because of setbacks,” he asked at the meeting.
Developers are “creative” – replied our city planner. If they can stabilize the shoreline to Conservation Halton’s satisfaction, anything’s possible. And the heritage buildings? They could all be torn down and replaced with a building of the same size and footprint – news to us, since we’ve been told only repairs and renovations are allowed.
Clearly our concerns about shoreline development in the Old Lakeshore Road have been valid all along. But our downtown councillor’s approach – and that of other candidates in this election – has been to malign and misrepresent Save Our Waterfront rather than deal with the legitimate questions and concerns that have been raised. I’m hoping that the end of the election campaign period will mean an end to politically motivated misinformation, and a refocusing on the issues at hand: namely, how we’re going to undo the damage done by the current council and protect our waterfront and shoreline from inappropriate development.
To read the original article on the removal of shoreline protection click here.
2 Comments
I think there is a bigger concern here rather than the waterfront. Burlington has a very nice waterfront and yes we should always strive to maintain it…that being said I do not think this is the biggest concern for our ward.
If you speak to anyone who lives in this area everyone will always say they love living here, except for one major issue. The traffic.
I wrote off this entire election because not one single candidate addressed the one concern I had. I no longer care to hear about the waste of money that is the peer, I don’t care to hear about the waterfront being developed or not. These things are all fine and well, but how do they really effect the average person on a day to day basis?
What I care about and what most people who live in the area care about is the traffic. It’s horrible and that’s putting it mildly. To get to work every morning it takes me about 6 minutes, getting home takes almost 25. You cannot drive down lakeshore, it’s a stop and go trial of patience each and every single week day. That’s not even factoring in Summer time traffic when there’s an event on, I don’t even have words to describe how awful that is. Last summer I had to plan to be home the entire weekend so I didn’t have to spend 2 hours trying to exit or re enter the downtown area. I had to go and get groceries and anything else I’d need just so I wouldn’t have to leave my house. Does nobody else find that ridiculous? Funny thing about that, my neighbours they did the same thing.
I have tried every single possible route to get home that will not take me nearly half an hour to drive what should be 6 minutes. New street isn’t any better, Prospect is horrible, Maple and Brant…forget about it. There is no option available where traffic is not an issue.
Have you ever been driving along and all you can see is a lineup of cars in front and behind you as far as the eyes can see? No I don’t mean Toronto …this is Burlington I am referring to. Even their new Mayor acknowledges traffic is horrible there. I challenge you to take a nice drive through the area around 430 on a weekday. You won’t get far quickly.
Doesn’t anyone consider this an issue? Most cities develop a strategy to deal with high traffic areas when it becomes congested. Burlington seems to be in the business of creating its own traffic. How many traffic lights does one street need? In front of my apartment on Lakeshore there are two sets of lights literally 3 car lengths away from each other. Is that really needed? To make matters worse none of the lights are even synched up properly. So when one light turns red it creates a massive line of traffic backing up for blocks and blocks down the road.
Why do we need so many of these lights? Why are they not synched up properly? Is someone in city hall taking a nice kick back from the people who install these lights? I’d like to know and I’m sure many other citizens would too.
The part of the city that bothers me most is our ward because its where I live and I can’t get home in a reasonable amount of time, but this issue exists city wide. Take Harvester and Appleby for example. We have lights at that intersection, then again 10 feet away from that…so now traffic is worse than it was before because once again the lights aren’t synched and traffic starts backing up. WHY do we need so many lights? Harvester isn’t an area where there are tons of pedestrians sauntering about. I fail to see why the one occasional pedestrian cannot walk the extra 10 feet to the light that were already in place there. This isn’t just Lakeshore and Harvester, Everywhere I drive I see more and more lights going up. With every light that goes up the traffic gets worse.
There are even lights randomly placed in the middle of streets for no reason like on Appleby just past Fairview. WHY are those lights there? Because there is a pathway there? How many people are using this path that it requires lights there? I have yet to see one person use these lights and I drive past there several times a day.
There is no major street in this city which does not suffer from horrible traffic congestion, excessive traffic lights and poorly planned timing on the lights. Bottom line you just can’t get anywhere in this city during busy times in a reasonable amount of time.
Another thing, why do all the manhole covers have to be sunken in on the roads? Does anyone care that this is horrible for citizens cars? They aren’t in the middle of the lane, always at the side so you need to try and consistently swerve to avoid them or hit them and risk damage to your vehicle. Is that a safe road to be driving on, where people are swerving all over the place? Does anyone actual plan anything in this city or do we just wing it. For that matter is there some kind of kickback to the mechanics for these because I don’t see any of them getting fixed. I’d almost rather take Barton Street in Hamilton than drive down Fairview. We have roads ripped up all over the city but there are no orange lines on the roads to warn you about the giant pot holes they just created, or for the pavement which is about to disappear out from under your car. For that matter there are roads that have been ripped up then just left that way without being completed like South Service Rd.
The long and short of my complaint here is that these things effect everyone and they affect everyone on a daily basis. So why are we wasting time and money bickering about the stupid peer or about waterfront development. Aren’t these the type of topics that should be left for discussion after the major problems have been fixed.
Maybe if someone takes initiative to try and change these things I might just bother getting off my butt and voting next time. Until then I hope none of you come to my door canvassing for my support next election…oh wait you can’t get there because the traffic on lakeshore is so bad you won’t be able to turn into the visitor parking of my building.
-Shannon
No more development to Lakeshore! The only two places I know you can go to see water is either spencer smith park or paletta mansion. Lets not lose heritage buildings because of Tim Hortons (Aka. TDL). The traffic is already busy and ridiculous on Lakeshore. The heritage needs to be preserved and cherished.
Its embarrassing that the politicians can say its a heritage building one minute and that its protected, go behind the public’s back the next minute and try to tear it down. No morals whatsoever and there isn’t much heritage in Burlington to begin with. Lets preserve history!