Why Kanata is so fired up over golf course

Developer said future green space would be safe, says Jamie Portman.

The most galling thing about the proposed desecration of the Kanata golf course is that the people behind the project initially seemed to regard it as a done deal.

However, to understand fully the anger of locals towards this plan to turn protected green space into another housing development, it’s best to start with an earlier unhappy chapter in the community’s history.

If you proceed to the end of Hansen Avenue, you’ll find Kanata’s lovely Beaver Pond area — or, rather, what’s left of it. Its north side, which once led to a wonderful network of wilderness trails, is today a blighted landscape.

It’s there that protesters chained themselves to trees in the winter of 2011 as the heavy equipment arrived to chop the greenery down. It was a final futile gesture after years of controversy.

Fed-up developers were bluntly serving notice of their intent, sometime in the future, to build 400 townhouses and homes in this primal Canadian Shield area.

Construction has yet to happen, and the site remains barren. But its razing served its purpose in deterring a public whose continuing use of the area for recreational purposes had become a growing irritant to the developers who owned it.

And there stands an unpalatable truth. KNL Development — a consortium of Urbandale and Richcraft Homes — had the law on its side. That’s because of a 1981 agreement that saw the former city of Kanata sign off on development of the disputed Beaver Pond area in exchange for guarantees of 40-per-cent open space in the emerging Kanata Lakes neighbourhood. That agreement was reached during the mayoralty of Marianne Wilkinson who, following amalgamation, would become a councillor for North Kanata. And it’s relevant to what’s happening today.

The mood of citizens at the time was best defined by an overflow public meeting at the Kanata United Church in the winter of 2004. It revealed a seething distrust of both developers and local government. Hostility against city planning representatives was palpable, not surprisingly given that their attitude to residents that night fluctuated between arrogance and condescension.

However, as controversy continued to rage, a representative of the developers made a statement that should be of profound significance to opponents of the current attempt to replace Kanata’s golf course with expensive new housing.

Mary Jarvis, land development manager for Urbandale, reminded protesters 15 years ago that they would continue to enjoy greenery. The golf course, she suggested, would remain safe as a legal part of that sacred 40-per-cent open-space commitment.

There’s real irony in these words, given that Urbandale’s partner in the disputed Beaver Pond development is Richcraft Homes, the same Richcraft Homes that is now a partner in the scheme to bulldoze the Kanata Golf and Country Club course.

Ottawa’s current city government is far more responsive to Kanata’s concerns than were previous regimes. North Kanata Coun. Jenna Sudds has a formidable ally in Mayor Jim Watson who has accused the golf course owner, ClubLink, of failing to live up to that 40-per-cent agreement, an agreement that further directed that if ClubLink no longer wished to operate a golf course, the land must be given to the city. Yet ClubLink, along with partners Richcraft and Minto, initially seemed to regard its carefully planned development proposal as a fait accompli: compliant planners would ensure that approval would be no more a formality.

Now, as developers and the city gear up for legal battles, ClubLink, still tone-deaf to opposition, contends that the old agreement is invalid and in so saying is setting itself up for a full-blown public relations disaster.

Having once been burned, Kanata residents are not prepared to give up another piece of green space that defines their community.

And who cares anyway whether, as ClubLink suggests, the golf course is no longer profitable?

Once the city takes on custodianship of this green space, it has a West End park ready to be so designated. Jamie Portman is a freelance journalist who lives in Kanata.