By Pepper Parr
August 5th, 2106
BURLINGTON, ON
The Air Park has taken on a legal life of its own that just may see Court cases that make their way to the Supreme Court of Canada – the issue is that significant to the municipal sector.
The judiciary and economic development are tied together, not always in the nicest or the most comfortable manner. One tends to bump into the other when interpretations of a bylaw or a regulation is needed. That bumping into each other has kept the city’s legal department busy
Trucks dumped tonnes of land fill on the air park site without having a site alteration plan approved by the city.
There are people in Burlington who see very significant merit in their being a small well run airport in the rural part of the city.
Fill from the Air Park tumbles down a slope and rests against the property line fence of the Cousin’s farm on Appleby Line. Water run off has flooded parts of the farm.
Most of the residents in north Burlington don’t have a problem with the air park – they do have a problem with what the owner of the property wants to do with the almost 200 acres of land that had 500,000 tonnes of land fill dumped on it without permission or acceptable testing by the municipal government.
Business people, especially those in the development field, understand what they call the long game – find property that will increase in value and has significant development potential and invest in it. Developers look for that patient money; the site one which the Bridgewater condominiums are being built first came to the public eye when Mayrose Tyco assembled that land in 1985.
The air park has been around for a long time; for the past decade or more it has been a contentious operation. The owner has brought a unique business style to how he has chosen to develop the opportunity he feels the site has and in the process has alienated his neighbours and run afoul of the city and to a lesser degree the Regional government.
The development game has changed; it is a lot more collaborative and developers are learning that municipalities have strengths they have not utilized in the past.
And Burlington is beginning to realize that citizen groups do not have to be just reactive to things they do not like but can be proactive and advocate for levels of change.
In Burlington the Sustainability Advisory Committee has real clout and influence; Heritage issues were basically outsourced to the Heritage Advisory Committee who put together a program that council liked. When the outline of that program was first revealed city council came close to giving the advisory committee a standing ovation.
There is room and opportunity now for responsible citizens groups to do their homework and take well researched proposals to city council.
While it will be a bit of a challenge for this city council, the time is ripe for city councils to listen more closely to some of the ideas that are brought forward.
There are also new and more collaboratively minded city staff who are capable of listening to the people who provide the money to meet the payroll.
Municipalities are at that talking the talk when the mention transparency – citizens have chosen to believe what they said and now expect those people to walk their talk. Done properly it comes out as responsible government – on of the corner stones this province was built on.
All the key players in the Airpark dispute:
The time is not right yet to expect the kind of leadership that is needed from the elected officials; too much dead wood on the current Burlington council. But it is time and the opportunity is there for the private sector that is much more responsible than the development community has been in the past to quietly develop ideas and opportunities to advance potential
Getting any air park development in rural Burlington from economic developers is going to require more than just an initiative from the economic developers and consistent nudging from the city’s Economic Development Corporation.
The city itself has to realize the potential and want to see that potential grown and the people in rural Burlington are going to have to be a significant part of that process.
During a council chamber foyer conversation, city manager Jeff Fielding made it very clear to Glenn Grenier, second from the left that the city did not share his view that the Air Park did not have to comply with city bylaws. Grenier had positioned himself as a leading expert in aeronautical law and that the city should respect their rights. The city didn’t believe the Air Park actually had the rights they said they have; that view was upheld by both a Superior |Court judge and an Appeal Court decision. The city’s legal counsel stand to the right.
A very small percentage of the people in Burlington are fully aware of the current air park issue and the legal battle that has been going on for more than five years. The upside to that battle is that it hasn’t cost the city all that much – their legal counsel keeps winning the court cases and getting costs on a rather financially attractive basis. It isn’t a profit centre but it is a nice way to do business.
When the rural community became aware of what at was going on they did what every community does; they formed an organization – the Rural Burlington Greenbelt Coalition, which itself is a collection of citizen interest groups – and delegated to city hall – very effectively. Monte Dennis had years of experience battling the development of the once planned airport at Pickering; he was part of that crew that did everything possible to prevent the destruction of a community when the province expropriated hundreds of acres of land for an airport development in Pickering. That was 40 years ago – the houses and community are gone – but there is no airport in Pickering.
Vanessa Warren delegated to city council on the landfill work being done at the Air Park and the impact it will have on her property – and the larger community as well.
Monte Dennis delegating before city council.
If it wasn’t Dennis delegating for the RBGC at city hall or the Region, it would be Vanessa Warren who was always exceptionally well prepared: she tended to know more than anyone else in the room.
Despite the talent within the RBGC they have yet to capture the public imagination. A large part of that is their all but total reliance on social media to get their message out.
Social media has its place but it isn’t the silver bullet that always delivers.
Going forward one can hope that the RBGC people can learn to partner or at least collaborate with the better parts of the economic development community and make the best possible use of the air park property for both the land owner and the wider community without any development distorting or damaging the community.
Few in rural Burlington have a problem with a small private aircraft air park- many very close to the air park kind of like the sound of the light air craft landing and taking off.
Vince Rossi, believed to be the sole owner of the Air Park.
There are opportunities for some “good jobs” economic development at the air park. Small engine maintenance – even possibly some mid-size aircraft maintenance. Properly managed the air park could handle much more small craft traffic.
RBGC needs to be before city council regularly, prodding and poking and providing the visionary leadership that is badly needed. They certainly have the talent and if they are consistent they should over time bring about the shift that is needed.
One wonders where the Regional government is in all this. There are dozens of municipalities that oversee the operation of small airports in their communities. Neither the chair or the region’s administration appear to have much in the way of appetite for an air park in Halton and Burlington’s city council representatives at the Region have never been able to pull together as a single cohesive voice that takes a position and makes it stick.
There is much work to be done.
Could the air park already be in play without the owner even knowing about it?
Full disclosure:Pepper Parr, publisher of the |Gazette, Monte Dennis and Vanessa were sued by the Air Park Inc for libel in 2013. The case has yet to get to trial.
