Burlington community gets its chance to offer their design for the Beachway; more than 70 citizens participate.

REVISED

By Pepper Parr

BURLINGTON, ON  June 29, 2012  It was pretty close to the  best community engagement meeting this city has seen since hundreds of us gathered at the Mainway Arena December 2010 to let the province know we didn’t like what they had in the way of plans for the Escarpment.

The meeting at the Arts Centre last night was a little more limited in its scope but no less important for the near term and long term growth of the city.

The meeting had 70 people in the room, working over ten foot long sheets of paper with a detailed picture of the waterfront from the western edge of Spencer Smith Park to the canal that defines our border with Hamilton.

The waterfront on the Hamilton side of the canal is robust, busy; used by people and a fun place to be.  The Burlington side of the Beachway is a little on the desolate side with very little activity.

The young people get out there at night and howl with too much alcohol in their systems as they roam on the sands along the beach.  It is far from a safe place late at night many evenings.

While the property belongs to the Conservation Authority, except for the close to 30 homes dotted through the stretch of land, it is managed as a park by the city.  It isn’t a park with anything in the way of program.  There is a concession stand that is open in the summer; there are washrooms the Regional Health department might want to have a look at some day.

The Pump House is there waiting for a new life and the Water Sewage Treatment plant on the north side of Lakeshore Road – undergoes a significant upgrade and some expansion.  The plans the Region has to shield the sewage treatment plant behind rows of trees when the construction work is done will improve the streetscape considerably.

But what is going to be in a part of the city that is now a kind of nature preserve, home to what the Region has referred to as a “dynamic beach” by which they mean sands that are constantly shifting and the base for some very significant flora.

It is not a people place right now.  It has a rag tag bit of a community made up of people who see the location as their home with a couple of speculators amongst them expecting to make a killing once development is allowed.

And that of course is the 800 pound gorilla of a word that sits there waiting for everyone to decide what to do with it.

Don’t expect to ever see anything that even hints of the word “new structure” south of the old railway embankment.  That is just not going to happen.  This isn’t Florida.  There is a small park, the Pump House will at some point get put to good public use, the Concession stand will be brought into the 21^st century.

But there is more than that happening along the Beachway.  The Joseph Brant Memorial Hospital is re-orienting their site and will look out over the lake in a way they haven’t in the past.  A clutch of buildings that size will have a significant impact on the Beachway.  We don’t know yet what that impact is going to be – but there will be an impact.

Ward 2 Councillor Marianne Mead Ward wants to see “eyes on the street” which we take to mean she would like to see it as a place where people live and perhaps even work.

Ward 1 Councillor Rick Craven hasn’t revealed a position yet.  He did say, in a jocular tone, that he thought the Pump House would make an excellent official residence for the Ward Councillor.  The city needs quite a bit more in terms of leadership from the Councillor on this one.

Meed Ward takes the view that as a city Councillor she represents the direct interests of her constituents but sees herself as perfectly free to talk about ideas for any part of the city.  That approach doesn’t sit well with Craven – but as this council now knows – there is no stopping Meed Ward.  This is a bigger picture politician.

The Waterfront Advisory committee has decided it will lead from behind and is waiting to see what the report from last night’s meeting has to say.  They expect to have something to say in the fall.

The Manager of Council Committees services, Grant Bivol, has completed the first draft of his report on the effectiveness of the Waterfront committee.  The report has come back to Bivol for some revision and will get sent to council committee soon.  Waterfront Advisory may not be around to offer any advice come the fall.  And that would be regrettable.  The city needs a citizens committee to offer advice; the one in place now will probably not exist at the end of the year.

There is room for some development in the Omaha and Willow Streets part of the Beachway.  This would be a great part of the city for an arts community; a quiet enclave where artisans could do their work.  Small consulting firms would fit into this kind of environment as well.

And what can be done with the houses that are on the south side of Lakeshore that back into the railway embankment?

The walking path has become the back yard for some of the houses along there; they are basically encroaching on public property.

The Thursday evening meeting was the third in a series that started with an event at the Waterfront Hotel where the home owners were out in force telling their story and getting very emotional in the process.  The second took place in Milton where maybe two people from the Milton community showed up.

Each of the ten tables set up on Thursday, had all the tools you needed to mark up the maps, write in comments, draw lines and argue a point of view.  There was a facilitator at each table taking notes that will get pulled together into a document the region will then use to prepare a draft recommendation that will go to the Regional Standing Committee that handles parks related matters and to all the municipalities.

The Conservation Authority will get involved – they do own the land that is not in private hands.

During the past year and a half, the Region  has had their Senior Planner, Stirling Todd,  attending Burlington’s Waterfront Advisory and Access Committee.  On numerous occasions Todd has spoken of the dynamic beach and the threats it faces with the moving of sand.  This, along with flooding potential, was mentioned almost every time Todd spoke.  The Waterfront people and the Conservation Authority as well as the community in the Beachway,  wanted to know if the dynamic beach had in fact shifted – and it had, further out and not further in as Todd has consistently claimed.

Serious flooding during a 1970 storm got upgraded to a threat that made the whole area very unsafe were water to come roaring in over the railway embankment.   The community was told that the water would pool on the north side of the embankment and be a serious public hazard.

The Water Treatment plant lies in this same area but there is never any mention of the flooding impacting on that plant.  Imagine the mess if the sewage treatment plant was taken out of commission because of a flood?   Flooding is never mentioned when people talk of the Joseph Brant Memorial Hospital which is in that part of the Beachway.  The hospital is reported to be in the lowest part of the flood plain  but that hasn’t stopped them from rushing forward with plans to have shovels in the ground by the end of the year putting up a significant addition to the hospital.

One gets the impression that the Region’s Senior Planner was being somewhat disingenuous with the people in the area that own property and using the dynamic beach and the flooding possibilities to scare the local residents who just want their community to remain.

The Region and the Conservation Authority do have an agenda; they just haven’t shown their hand yet.

The Workshop was led by a very able facilitator who used different language Thursday evening as he described the location.  Last night he consistently referred to the place as a “park”.  That was not a word he used as often during the first two public meetings he facilitated.

While the location is indeed a park, it is also a community and a part of the city that houses the sewage treatment plant and a large marshalling yard for Ministry of Transportation vehicles.  Using the word “park” all the time kind of precludes any other possibilities.  The Beachway has a rich history as a community; and it is a community today.

Laura and Glen Gillespie, two Beachway residents who are proud home owners were very vocal at the first community meeting.  Laura, a bright vivacious woman tends to get emotional when she talks about her home.  Both she and her husband can be disruptive and they are very direct.  This is where they live and they have the sense that they play no part in what is going to happen to them.  Many others in the community feel the same way – but they don’t state their concerns as directly as the Gillespie’s.

When they entered the meeting room last night the facilitator was right there beside them, almost like a police officer keeping an eye on a truant – he didn’t want the trouble makers getting out of hand and ruining his meeting.

The Gillespie’s aren’t trouble makers – they are property owners who want informed answers to their questions.  They had hoped to be able to talk with their council member – he chose not to engage them and suggested they make an appointment to meet with him.

The Region has a policy of buying up every piece of property that came on the market but the formula they use for determining the price the Region/Conservation Authority will offer results in private interests buying up the properties.  Is there any land assembly taking place – hard to tell but most people don’t think so.

Parking seemed to be the biggest concern.  There is bus service into the area.

No one spoke all that passionately about putting the Freeman Station somewhere along the Beachway Park.

Mark Gordon, a downtown core resident  reflected on the meetings that brought Spencer Smith Park into being and said the meeting that focused on the Beachway last night was not much different.  Gordon added that it took a long, long time for the citizen involvement to have any impact.  Spencer’s at the Waterfront restaurant was supposed to be a “family” restaurant – and it certainly isn’t that today.  Families get shuffled off into the lower level where they can buy candy from vending machines or hot dogs and hamburgers from a counter.  They are decent hamburgers however and the place is clean.

The Beachway – that magnificent stretch of sand that was once bordered on the north by a CN rail line and was once the location for very close to 300 homes that began as summer cottages and over time got upgraded to year round homes.

Most were on leases from CN Rail.  When the Conservation Authority took possession of the rail line and the land, the leases came with the land.  When the leases expired they weren’t renewed and one by one the houses were torn down.

Three of the six Burlington council members were in attendance; Meed Ward, Craven and Dennison, those with a significant interest in how that part of the city develops.  Mayor Goldring did not attend.

The city has yet to put forward an opinion and the Beachway isn’t a large part of the Official Plan Review.  It’s almost as if the Beachway isn’t something the city can do anything about or isn’t ready to come forward with an opinion and offer a sound sense of direction to the Region.

Every member of council will refer to that part of the city as the jewel in the city’s crown – but no one seems to want to polish the jewel and make it something worth showing off and making use of.

There have been plans for the Beachway  part of the city right back to the days when the former Mayor of Toronto David Crombie created the Waterfront Trail.  There was once going to be A Discovery Centre close to the canal but that went to Hamilton where it failed.

Former Toronto Mayor David  Crombie told the Waterfront Advisory Committee when he spoke to them that there was a time when Burlington was a leader in waterfront advocacy but that that was some time ago and is no longer the case today.

So – what does Burlington want to do with the Beachway?  Spencer Smith Park is well developed, heavily used and a splendid place to spend time – any time of the year.

There is a future for the Beachway as well  – but if the citizens have ideas, hopes or aspirations for that part of the city – they need to make their voices heard now, or the Conservation Authority and the Region’s Senior Planner will impose what they think we should have.

Along with the 70 people on the room toiling over maps and fervently discussing their ideas, there was at least one city developer quietly listening.