The public comments at the recent Council Meeting about the rezoning application for 202 Second St. brought forth a couple of people saying the same thing. But the most passionate and cogent comment came from former Mayor John Henderson. In his estimation, using his vast local knowledge of the Town, he told the Council that if this application goes through then there is a potential of seven or eight other pieces of developable land that would also have at least eight storey buildings. Cobourg Downtown as we know it will be destroyed!

Imagine that; a ring of high-rises surrounding Victoria Hall cutting off access and sightlines to the Lake.

This forecast has to be believed. It may make Doug Ford happy in his lust for more housing, of any type, but it will ensure the destruction of the economic engine of Cobourg. People relocate to Cobourg for many reasons but one of the main drivers is the Downtown core. Whatever we may think of it, it is still the main attraction of Cobourg for visitors. Also the Film Industry likes it too. Imagine the next season of “The Murdoch Mysteries” filming in Cobourg with a backdrop of high-rises – NOT HAPPENING!

So how do we stop this from happening?

Well we have two Mayoral candidates, one who has reorganised the Planning Department into a Development Division and appointed a person without any planning qualifications to be the Director of the Division and the other a person who has watched this happen and will presumably put the brakes on such reorganisations. So we can vote for the person who will stop this development. Neither candidate has spoken about the need to stop this and they should.

What else can we do:

Insert into the latest review of the Official Plan rules to hold building heights to a maximum of four storeys in the Downtown Heritage District.

Use the time between now and when  the application comes back to Council to instruct the Director of Development to rewrite his report, respect the Official Plan and keep the height to the maximum laid out in the Official Plan.

Investigate whether the Midtown Creek Diversion is feasible in a modern engineering way. The pipes were put into the ground twenty-six years ago when the downtown and King St was reconstructed. However in order to connect the pipes and have a continuous flow one of the connections is a right-angle and the other is at forty-five degrees. These connections not being straight are obstructions that will cause flooding upstream in extreme weather conditions. So a reexamination should be required to see if they are up to code. If the project needs to be reengineered or abandoned because engineering standards have changed the the Town should consider the expropriation of the 202 Second St. lands

These ideas are not new but should be part of the honest debate that we should be having between Council and Citizens, something that has not really happened yet. All we know is that Staff is pushing an application that on the surface, until proven otherwise, is in violation of the Official Plan and present rezoning regulations, and we have not been told why.

Answers should be forthcoming but we will not be holding out collective breaths.