Gordon Prentice at Large - Politics in Newmarket
- Details
- Written by: Gordon Prentice
Last night’s candidates Q&A, hosted by the Newmarket Chamber of Commerce, is great free entertainment but it is also revealing. Everyone is on their best behaviour – including the moderator, Steve Hinder, who is enthusiastically in favour of the proposed Clock Tower development but doesn’t let his bias show and handles things well. 
Given their views on the Clock Tower, Ian Johnston and Tom Pearson can be immediately discounted. They are not serious contenders.
Tracee Chambers is against. She believes the Heritage By-law should be respected. She wants a master plan for the old downtown.
Ron Eibel is against. He insists on a strict three storey height cap.
Peter Geibel is against. He wants to move Forrest’s condo from Main Street to the tennis courts. Intensification is needed but it should go where it belongs.
Ian Johnston is for. He is all over the place before concluding that Forrest’s Clock Tower is needed.
Tom Pearson is for. He says it is not going away. He says anyone who believes that is dreaming in technicolour.
Bob Kwapis is against 7 storeys but, other than that, it is open for discussion.
Darryl Wolk is against. He is very firm on the three storey limit. He says the By-law must be respected.
Apart from the two outliers, Johnston and Pearson, the former often incoherent and the latter credulous, a clear majority of the candidates reject Mayor Tony Van Bynen’s view that the Clock Tower “is a great example of the intensification we need”.
- Details
- Written by: Gordon Prentice
The drawings and elevations of the proposed development at the old school site are now available. You can check them out here.
Comment will follow.
- Details
- Written by: Gordon Prentice
In my commentary on Bob Forrest’s “Project Landscape” I talked about the zoning magic that apparently allows the Clock Tower development to rise to seven storeys.
It is all smoke and mirrors.
All Bob Forrest’s buildings are within UC-D1 which restricts any new developments to three storeys. However, the property line at 190 Main Street South (owned by Forrest) extends into the Market Square parking lot and into the UC-D2 zone allowing Forrest to claim in his Planning Justification Report that
“a portion of the property (ie the land that he owns) and the lands to the west zoned UC-D2 permit six storeys as of right.”
In fact, a tiny portion of the land he owns falls into UC-D2. He could not build anything on such a postage stamp sized piece of land.
Instead he uses it in a land swap to get the land he needs for his underground car park which is owned by the Town.
The map below shows the zone boundaries delineated by a heavy black line while the darker purple lines are property lines.
Forrest explains all this in his “Project Landscape” in his answer to Q16:
“Market Square is a public parking lot, located west and south of the proposed building. Part of the lot is on land that is owned by the applicant (Bob Forrest). The applicant proposes to convey surface rights to its portion of Market Square to the municipality while retaining below grade rights for its underground parking structure. In return, the applicant is seeking underground rights to a small area of Market Square which belongs to the Town. This constitutes the so-called “Land Swap”.”
Forrest says he will exchange the surface rights to his little portion of Market Square if he gets underground rights
“to a small area of Market Square which belongs to the Town”. (My underlining)
In fact, the exchange is not remotely equivalent.
The land swap is a seriously bad deal.
The drawings below (parking levels 1 and 2) show Forrest’s property line and the huge amount of underground parking space that comes from the Town. (And, of course, there are no public spaces. The spaces are all reserved for Clock Tower residents and their visitors.) The drawing for parking level 3 does not show the property line and is not reproduced here.
The bottom line is this:
The Clock Tower development cannot proceed without the land swap.
And the land swap gives nothing to the Town – except surface rights to a small portion of Market Square.
Update on 4 October 2016: I should have mentioned that a closed session of the Committee of the Whole in June 2013 gave "approval in principle" to the land swap. This is, of course, not binding.
Underground Parking at the Clock Tower. Level 1 (note the property line. Everything to its right is land owned by Forrest and, to the left, owned by the Town)
Underground Parking at the Clock Tower. Level 2. (Again, note the property line)
