I've spent mega-hours over the last two months fighting to stop changes to zoning that would allow the construction of a large townhouse tract on farmland beside my home. The town was getting ready to give the developer what he wanted.
Against all odds, we brought a large group of neighbours together, delivered umpteen protest flyers, created a website, placed signs on cars, lobbied Council, got interviews in local papers, attended Council meetings en masse, created procedural roadblocks to delay things, got some insider help, and basically drove the developer crazy.
On Tuesday afternoon, the developer blinked. He revised all the way down from 191 townhouses + 25 bungalows to just 117 single-family bungalows.
Awesome for your community!! One for the little guy! We had a similiar fight against commercial development in our sleepy community. No one gets her point across like an 8 month pregnant woman at a city hall meeting!! My wife was great!
Later...rog
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later...rog
AADD supporting member !!
I'm a collector...not a builder!!Located in sunny central Saskatchewan at the lakehead!
RE-FRESHING TO HEAR THE AVERAGE JOE'S WINNING SOMETHING LIKE THAT. JUST GOES TO SHOW, NEVER GIVE UP. SCREAM LOUD ENOUGH AND THEY CAN'T HELP BUT TO HEAR YOU.
Too late for that, Carl, but I'm hiring myself out for small-town battles with developers. I learned a whole lot about the process and how to drive them crazy.
The paving of paradise doesn't always have to continue. The most important factor? One or two stubborn-assed locals who refuse to accept defeat. And, if a half-dozen or so people are willing to devote many hours to the cause, you stand a good chance.
In this Internet age, instant communications with your troops, the public and with the town and developer helps to level the playing field. I was able to see that the Councillors and the developer were visiting the website every day, so every day we gave them a new problem to worry about.
Congrats. On a similar note: A small but determined group fought the establishment of a waste dump in Simcoe County. Against great odds they have been successful in stopping Dump Site 41. And some say it can't be done! BTW - this would have been in the backyard of 73SCs summer abode.
Right on! I'm so tire of these crappy developments with upteen million houses and no yards, parks, trees. Makes you want to puke. No neighbourhoods anymore, just level appartment buildings.
Yeah. Like my signature says.......... "There's a crack in everything, That's how the light gets in."
If you look hard enough, it's amazing what you can find. Plus, being self-employed, I decided to take a whole lot of time off work and drive the planning department, the councillors and the developer nuts. If the developer had decided to go to the OMB, he would have found that our group would be happy to dance with him for a long, long time.
He got the message and cut his losses.
Don't be coming into my small-town with your grandiose big city ideas.
The proposed units were to be built in blocks of as many as 12 three-storey townhouses per block (6 back-to-back), with just enough room between blocks to run firetrucks down.
Not on my watch, in a small town with no pressing demand for housing. The developer was simply trying to "create" a demand by stretching the 401 commute even further from the "big smoke" while turning our town into another bedroom community.
Instead, they're building something like this, which around here, attracts retirees.
yeah, the 'housing' bedroom communities (like Barrie) with no employment to suit the residents once they tire of the commute and look for work within the city is a bit of a 'house of cards' economically... i think most people/purchasers are sheep when it comes to following the lead of developers creating an artificial demand for crappy housing that isnt sustainable!! residential is certainly very controlled by certain land developers who create a false market and economy (they control the supply and thus can hike prices!)
Well done Bob! Where exactly are you located? North of Coburg? I can't believe people with their heads screwed on properly would consider commuting from there every day to downtown TO; my commute when traffic is bad can be as long as 30 minutes and I consider that too long! We really have to do more to encourage people to live close to their place of work and stop all this nutty long distance commuting - it wastes fuel, wears out our roads faster, causes more traffic and hence accidents plus it is just a huge colossal waste of time that people could be spending with their families, working on their Pontiacs, etc. I used to have a secretary who commuted downtown from the 519 area code, to my mind, if it's long distance to phone home, that is just plain nuts!
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Hillar
1970 LS4 (eventually an LS5) Laurentian 2dr hdtp -and a bunch of other muscle cars...
