It may have been cold and blustery outside
last Monday night, but the resolve was on fire at Fresh Start on Baker Street as
the first official meeting of the Land Is More Important Than Sprawl, or LIMITS
began. Over 50 people filled the small space on the first floor of the Baker
Street Centre in order to discuss direction in terms of mounting an appeal to
the construction of a 675-acre industrial and business park development. The
long in the works Hanlon Creek Business Park has been on the books for years,
but it looks to moving forward to a groundbreaking sometime this year.
The problem? That nearly a quarter of that
land is home to an old growth forest, where some trees are as old as 500 years,
with many more well above the age of 200. As presented in the meeting, the
land, which is west of the Hanlon with Laird Road running through the centre of
it, is also home to 90 species of birds, 20 species of reptiles and several
mammal species including deer, coyote and fox. The focus on local wildlife had
a purpose, or as one member of LIMITS observed, “It’s about respect and
realizing that there are things that belong here besides us.”
Much of the main presentation was about the
environmental impact on the specific area where the HCBP hopes to set up shop
and the Guelph area generally. The Downey Well sits on this tract of land, a
source of water that supplies Guelph with 20 per cent of what it drinks. The
Hanlon Creek itself feeds into the Speed River acting as a “recharge zone,” as
well as being one of the four, major tributaries to the Grand River, which
serves Cambridge and the Six Nations Reserve.
The way LIMITS sees it, there are some
fairly large stakes for not just Guelph, but the surrounding community, should
construction of the HCBP move forward. The point of last Monday’s meeting was
two fold: to gage interest in making this activist start-up a more formal
entity and kicking around some ideas about how to launch the “official”
protest, so to speak. And time is of the essence, members of the group feel,
they believe that the melting of the snow may herald the beginning of the end
for this patch of greenspace.
Several options were discussed including
make appeals to Environmental Commissioner of Ontario Gord Miller and bringing
the issue back to the City Council. LIMITS is also interested in exploring
brownfield options, considering so much land in the inner city is already built
on and simply waiting for business to make use of it. First and foremost, they
want to avoid a situation where the wetlands and forests on the proposed HCBP
site are drained and clear cut.
They’re concerned about a recent trend in
construction called Speculative Development, where an area is cleared by the
landowners as they try and sell the space and find tenants and finding tenants
maybe an issue given current economic conditions. According to Statistics
Canada, the number of new building permits issued nationwide declined by 12 per
cent in November, the most recent month numbers have been released for. In
Ontario, non-residential building permits were down by 30 per cent over the
same period in 2007.
As for LIMITS’ next stage plans, they hope
to keep up their momentum from Monday night with more meetings in the next
couple of weeks. They’re also seeking out alliances with other environmental
and pro-responsible development groups in order to make an impact on the public
consciousness and get their message out before any shovels dig into the earth
on the HCBP property. For full details on the city’s plans for the Hanlon Creek
Business Park, you can check it out on the city’s website for this link: http://guelph.ca/uploads/business/documents/Flyer07.pdf.
And to learn more about LIMITS, you visit their Facebook group or fire off an
e-mail to guelphlimits@gmail.com
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