It’s worth remembering that in 1978’s Superman: The Movie, all of Lex Luthor’s plotting and scheming and nuclear weapon theft and cop killing is in aid of getting rich through a real estate scam. He aims to start an earthquake so massive that formally worthless desert will be turned into priceless beachfront property.
To quote Luther’s own father, as he does, "Son, stocks may rise and fall, utilities and transportation systems may collapse. People are no damn good, but they will always need land and they will pay through the nose to get it!”
Land is a matter top-of-mind this week in a couple of quarters. First, there’s the meeting of the Grand River Conservation Authority that took place Friday about the future of surplus GRCA in the south end, and then on Wednesday there will be a discussion at Committee of the Whole about using surplus lands owned by the City for housing.
Now this land is important, the former is presently agricultural land next to other riverfront property, and the latter is two portions of parkland, but in Luthorian terms these are probably not land deals worth getting out of bed for. And if the goal is developing more housing, even a non-supervillain like me has his doubts.
As a former resident of the west end, I probably walked past Sleeman Park a thousand of times, and I’ve got to say that at no point had I ever looked at the ball diamond there and thought, “This would be a good place for a couple of houses or an apartment building.” I’ve never given as much thought to Hugh Guthrie Park, but at least the ball diamond there is spared although some of the only public trees along that portion of Edinburgh Road will get smoked.
So why are we looking to sacrifice portions of our local parks to the development gods? It goes back to Mayor Cam Guthrie’s directive to staff to evaluate “possible sites for consideration and proposes potential ways for the City to begin to engage in strategic real estate partnerships.”
Staff were given 'till the end of the second quarter to put something together, which would imply that they found the easiest land to contribute to the cause, but I can’t imagine there’s anything easy about shaving off an acre at a couple of parks. It also seems pretty shortsighted because does anyone know what these neighbourhoods think about a portion of their local park now becoming a house or five? I take it you’ve never heard the acronym, “NIMBY”?
As for the property generally known as the Niska lands, you might be forgiven for not knowing a lot about them. It’s one of those Grandpa Simpson stories that starts with why he was wearing an onion on his belt, which was the style at the time, and it ends with nearly 20 years of waiting for the report that came back to the GRCA board on Friday.
In between, there was the Kortright Waterfowl Park, a place that was appreciated as both a nature preserve and an active park, and even though those two directives sometimes came into conflict, the park was another one of those unique Guelph attractions at a time when Guelph was trying to foster unique attractions. Eventually, that momentum just petered out and the city limits caught up to Niska Road.
Guelph added about 30,000 more people between the time the park closed in 2005 and today, and I’m probably not wrong thinking that if I polled 10 random people on the street and asked them for directions to the Kortright Waterfowl Park, I would get nine confused looks and someone that maybe remembers it. Given that reality, maybe it shouldn’t be surprising that someone might want to build houses on some portion of it.
Although the exact number can be debated, Guelph has a parkland deficit. With only so much land to go around for any number of uses, land that would be appropriate for a park is at a premium, and now we have a plan to start shaving off parkland, or perspective parkland, for housing. And if that’s not bad enough, another City report posted just a month ago says that Guelph has enough land to build houses on for the next 18 years.
The Guelph Growth Management and Affordable Housing Monitoring Report 2023 does note there are issues with some of that land, like the need for remediation or the fact that they’re outfitted with a holding provision. It’s also worth noting those future lands include the area in the Clair-Maltby Secondary Plan, which won’t become available in the short-term. Still, the message should be that the City is not so land poor that is needs to start chopping up parks.
Our housing solutions also keep proceeding from a singular, oversimplified assumption, the reason why people are homeless is because there aren’t enough houses to go around. Supply is definitely an issue, but who’s going to buy houses built on old baseball diamonds? The same people who can buy houses in Guelph right now.
Among the bizarro series of recent events at Queen’s Park – from beer drama to early election talk and the sudden shuttering of the Ontario Science Centre – there’s been nary any open discussion about our ongoing crises of housing and homelessness. It almost seems like they’ve given up on finding real and lasting solutions, and it kind of feels the same with our magnificent Strong Mayor directives.
Already this year, the Public Space Uses Bylaw disappeared into a black hole of legalese, and tiny homes are waiting for, at best, a tepid endorsement to proceed from the County. We’ll find out how far that goes next week, and we will also see if a council thinks a couple of acres off a couple of parks will make any difference in the housing crisis on Wednesday.
True, they’re not making any more land, but if we’re not careful, we’re all going to end up paying through the nose for this shortsightedness.
