Dear Mayor, City Councillors, City Planner
This is a request for each of you to answer the question “HOW WOULD I FEEL”
I am guessing that the majority of you live in a single detached residential home, not unlike the homes surrounding the Chancery property. Before you conduct the next Council meeting or Heritage Committee meeting that includes the Chancery Development, take a moment, look each other in the eye and ask ” how would I feel” if a developer knocked on my door to say the following:
“Hi, Just here to let you know I have bought up all the properties on your street except your property. I’m knocking down the structures and putting up a 4 or 5 storey building that will stretch the entire block and sit 1.5 metre from your property. I’ll be cutting down all the century trees that provide you with shade, but after I build my new structure you won’t see sun touching your property from 9 a.m.until late afternoon anyway. Oh and at night you will no longer have darkness in your backyard because of the light pollution from all the building units, the parking lot lighting and headlights of vehicles on the lot. And I might as well add the noise pollution from vehicle engines starting up, doors slamming shut and
let us not forget the 4 a.m. scraping of snow on the parking lot asphalt.”
HOW WOULD I FEEL could have 3 options.
Option 1: I DON’T CARE because, well I know that’s not really going to happen to me. I’m safe. So I will support the changes demanded by this out of town developer and allow him to maximize his profits on his greed for profit project and dismiss the concerns of our existing permanent residents, knowing that this opens the door for all future developers to demand the same wherever in the city they decide to build.
Option 2: I feel that as a responsible representative of this city I should defend our Official Plan and Bylaws that we put in place to give guidance to how we move forward as a city. The out of town developer will have to build within the official plan that he was aware of when he purchased this property. This will result in a structure or structures that more properly blends into the existing neighbourhood and still increase residential density.
Option3: If we are going to support the changes to our Official Plan to please this developer I feel we could offer a positive gesture by purchasing the property on Trow Ave, the residence of this email author, for current market value, to allow the owner and his family to move from this neighbourhood before we sign the documents that will butcher this neighbourhood forever.
William Calder
Stratford