Aldershot feeling pushed to the intensification brink
Residents of Burlington’s Aldershot neighbourhood can be forgiven for feeling they bear the brunt of Burlington’s housing intensification disproportionately.
Recently, another developer announced 246 more apartment units for Aldershot, adding to the mid-rise and highrise buildings springing up along an already congested Plains Road, overloading infrastructure that has fallen behind over the years.
Existing and future city building permit applications indicate that some 46.6 per cent of Burlington’s currently planned housing units are destined for Aldershot. If that percentage seems impossibly high, bear with me while I break it down.
Burlington is targeted by the province to build 29,000 additional residential housing units by 2031. Of this number, 21,853 are in the planning process. Most of that growth will take place at Burlington’s three MTSAs (Major Transit Station Areas); Zoning limitations around the Appleby GO station mean building intensification will occur mostly around Aldershot GO, Burlington GO and the former downtown bus terminal. Of those 21,853 units, a staggering 10,200 are destined to be built in Aldershot.
For a neighbourhood that makes up only 14.6 per cent of the city’s urban development area, this seems hugely disproportionate. Residents who have seen the impact of over 3,000 residential units already built along Plains Road and at Masonry Court over recent years, receive new development announcements almost weekly and wonder is there any end to this? And, more importantly, is the city providing the infrastructure to support this in a timely manner? In a community where infrastructure is already stretched by those 3,000 recently built units with little corresponding additional investment, Aldershot residents worry what impact another 10,200 housing units will have.
For years they have watched population, traffic and congestion explode in their neighbourhood while major city investments seem to be made in every area of the city except Aldershot. They have watched the city build the Haber Centre, commit millions of dollars to repurposing Bateman High, make wonderful improvements to Mountainside Arena, Skyway Arena and Community Hub and Nelson Pool and Community Hub and wondered why the investment takes place so far from where intensification and the population are increasing fastest.
West of Brant Street, city facilities amount to a ’70s era Aldershot Arena, ’60s era high school pool and a library branch which between them provide only four small community rooms. The only local gains from intensification are tiny retail facilities along Plains Road, provided as consolation for the lack of meaningful investment in community, retail or leisure facilities.
By 2031, the number of residential housing units in Aldershot will grow exponentially, as will the population. This imbalance of overdevelopment and lack of local investment begs the question: When will roads, transit, schools and community infrastructure catch up with the development and population onslaught? Most of this building will occur around Plains and Waterdown roads in the city’s farthest west-end.
Plains Road is Aldershot’s only east-west arterial road and Waterdown Road, its only highway access. Neither of these already congested corridors can be widened where they most need to be. So what is the plan to keep traffic moving? Increasing transit services will be challenging. The No. 1 bus along Plains Road, already the city’s busiest service, stretches the availability of city buses at peak periods. This bus shortage also hinders any increase in the No. 4 service to downtown. The idea of a South Service Road has been suggested between King and Waterdown roads, but with hydro structures preventing this from being extended to Brant Street it will do little to help and is many years away.
While developers are clearly winning the intensification war in Aldershot, residents on the losing side of the infrastructure and amenities battle deserve answers to these and many more questions about city plans to tackle the infrastructure imbalance. Dare I open the discussion with a plea for a west-end grocery store?