Earlier this week the Economic Development and Planning Committee received an application to convert about 36 acres of employment lands to residential lands. I am opposed to this application because we have senior planners and Economic Development officials telling us that we are critically short on serviced employment lands. Hemson consulting peer reviewed the developer’s study and found that the developer has not made the case that these employment lands are not needed for commercial / industrial development. However, the argument put forward by the developer is that these lands have not been developed over 30 years and are next to existing residential lands, yet their proposal for these lands would still place residential adjacent to employment lands.

Let me be clear, I am not opposed to residential development. However, I am opposed to using employment lands for this purpose. In order to address the burden of residential taxes, we need to expand our tax base by attracting companies to build/invest in Hamilton. Companies are passing us by for communities like Brantford and Kitchener because they have open, serviced employment lands.  This development will further impact on the lack of inventory of serviced employment lands and therefore should not be supported.

What are your thoughts on this?  Agree?  Disagree?