Burlington’s growing pains
Pressure to continue building highrise condos downtown is an election issue
Kelly Childs moved to Burlington in 2008 looking to escape “the hustle” of Toronto.
It broke her heart when she learned that the block where she and her daughter operate Kelly’s Bake Shoppe had been sold to a condo developer.
The cupcake emporium on Burlington’s main drag draws thousands of customers in a busy week with the promise of luscious treats, part of a charming strip of stores and restaurants leading to the lake.
On a recent weekday morning, Kelly’s was crowded with a group of moms and babies. But directly north, the Blossom City restaurant, Thomasville furnishings, Elizabeth Interiors and Celli’s restaurant are already closed or have moved.
The nearby 23-storey Carriage Gate Homes development and its “twin tower” — a developer has already filed a proposal for a 24-storey sister building — are displacing those stores. The notices on the empty shop windows and impending construction across from city hall have become a rallying point for a polarized community in advance of the fall civic election.
Residents and businesses are divided among those who believe tall buildings will feed the vitality and sustainability of the city and those who worry development will drive up prices, pushing out Burlington’s character and dwarfing its civic buildings.
“I’ve never seen this kind of tension — I’m going to call it the pitchfork. There are so many residents that are waking up to it,” Childs said.
Burlington is the latest battleground in the Toronto region where municipalities are struggling to welcome more residents without planting them on farmers’ fields and environmentally sensitive areas. Guided by the province’s anti-sprawl growth plan, intensification zones with denser housing are rising around newly expanded transit lines.
Early estimates in the new official plan call for an additional 14,000 people and 1,200 jobs to be added to the downtown, beyond 2041. Up to 72,000 residents and 60,000 jobs are expected in the areas surrounding the Aldershot, Burlington and Appleby GO stations beyond 2041.
Burlington’s downtown should never have been considered one of those zones, say local critics.
Childs says she’s not blaming anyone.
But, in the absence of a compromise, Childs says, “To me (highrise) creates more a generic downtown. It takes away the uniqueness of some storefronts.”
The recent onslaught of development applications has spurred residents to show up in force for public meetings and even post
“Height Is No Solution” lawn signs.
Downtown Coun. Marianne Meed Ward says “hyper-intensification” will push small businesses off Brant Street with higher rents, replacing them with generic chains, traffic jams and inadequate parking. It won’t enhance the city’s housing needs and it will be wildly out of scale with the heritage surroundings, she said.
There are 35 active development applications at the city, including official plan and zoning bylaw amendments. Construction is already underway downtown on a mid-rise condo west of Brant Street across from the Performing Arts Centre, and there’s another residential building east of Brant and a massive hotel-condo going up on the lakefront.
Burlington has asked for a review of an Ontario Municipal Board decision that would allow Adi Developments to build a 26-storey condo north of Lakeshore Road, just east of Brant Street.
“We have over 90 buildings both residential and commercial within the downtown boundaries that are heritage properties. Only a quarter are designated under that act, which protects them from demolition,” said Meed Ward.
The lone No vote on Burlington council’s recently adopted new official plan, Meed Ward says she is running for mayor.
Residents like retiree Penny Hersh agree with Meed Ward that the plan, the blueprint for how Burlington will grow, was passed in haste and with too few specifics. Hersh is among the organizers of the group behind the lawn signs, Engaged Citizens of Burlington (ECOB). It organized a workshop in February to
encourage more civic election participation. Nearly 100 people turned up.
Hersh lives in a 15th-floor condo near the Bridgewater residential-hotel project under construction on Lakeshore Road, comprising a 22-storey condo, another seven-storey condo and an eight-storey hotel. She says she knew about the development when she moved there and isn’t complaining. She didn’t move to downtown Burlington to look at the water.
“I moved downtown because I wanted to be able to walk … Burlington wants to be a walkable community, but in the downtown there are a lot of seniors. No one’s getting on their bicycle to cycle up to the No Frills (grocery store) in January,” she said.
Hersh says she’s fine with development around the city’s three GO stations. But designating downtown Burlington as an intensification zone and mobility hub, based on its tiny bus depot, makes no sense.
“We aren’t fighting the highrises. We’re just asking for a sensible, smart plan,” she said.
Mayor Rick Goldring says he’s aware of the angst around intensification.
Highrise “is a symbol of something in other communities that people don’t want to be like,” he said. But he argues Burlington has no choice.
“We’re at a different place than we’ve been in our history. We don’t have any more greenfield remaining. The days of building single-family-home developments are behind us,” he said.
Going forward, the city’s focus is on creating more mixed-use, walkable, transit-friendly neighbourhoods around mobility hubs.
He likens it to building the Performing Arts Centre.
Back then some residents thought the city didn’t need and couldn’t afford the 718-seat venue. They worried that it would be “elitist,” that tickets would be too expensive. Nearly seven years after the curtain went up, Goldring says it’s difficult to imagine Burlington without the theatre.
The new “Grow Bold” official plan, prescribing where growth will be concentrated, still has to be approved by Halton Region. It will be followed by a new transit plan recommending frequent service on some key routes, says the mayor.
But the first significant changes aren’t likely to happen until fall 2019.
Brian Dean, executive director of the 435-member Burlington Downtown Business Association, calls the opposition “the most concentrated, vociferous group of residents I have seen in 20 years.”
In the business community and even among the association’s 12 board members, “there is very little consensus over whether this period of unprecedented development is the best thing since sliced bread or the death knell of the downtown,” he said.
When city officials reviewed pictures of downtown Burlington from 20 years ago, what they found wasn’t exactly Mayberry.
So Burlington invested about $150 million in improvements such as the arts centre and adjacent parking garage.
“When the public sector makes that kind of significant investment in a downtown, it’s a good thing because it creates that confidence and that vibrancy,” said deputy city manager Mary Lou Tanner, Burlington’s former chief planner.
“What we’re now seeing is that (development) demand is starting to ramp up a bit.”