Province Challenges City Calculations

(abridged from CATCH News www.hamiltoncatch.org)

The provincial government disagrees with key assumptions used by the city to decide the size of the aerotropolis and told city staff this last November, but this only came out when a provincial letter was handed to councillors as they were deciding to approve staff recommendations.

The letter challenges six city assumptions “not supported” by the ministry. The largest appears to be the decision to plan for 59,000 new industrial jobs, rather than the 49,000 number set by the province – an increase of about 20 percent.

The province is also rejecting city assumptions that 10 percent of its industrial lands will never be utilized, and that another 10 percent will have non-industrial uses.

It also challenges the city’s failure to count existing uses of the land, infrastructure, utility corridors, and floodplains in their calculations. And it opposes “using a net-to-gross factor of 20 percent” which it suggests violates the provincial Growth Plan.

“The assumptions have the potential to result in an overestimation of the land needed for future employment growth”, says the letter. “The continued use of these assumptions increases the estimate of additional land needed to accommodate the Airport Employment Growth District.”

Perhaps most significantly, the letter bluntly disagrees with the city’s decision to locate all future industrial expansion exclusively on greenfield sites.

“The Growth Plan requires municipalities to prepare intensification strategies and plan to accommodate significant amounts of both future residential and employment growth in existing built-up areas,” says the letter. “To date, Municipal Affairs and Housing / Public Infrastructure Renewal have not seen any intensification analysis related to employment lands.”

Mayor Eisenberger suggested that the provincial calculations of actual greenfield need amount to less than half of the city’s, and even less than the 546 hectares that he urged councillors to support as “a first step” in zoning airport area lands for industrial use.

“This number’s actually higher than the original number that the province would suggest, what they think is a reasonable expansion on the employment growth side,” Eisenberger argued in an unsuccessful attempt to amend the staff recommendation.

His motion was supported by Bob Bratina, Scott Duvall, Brian McHattie and Rob Pasuta, but the change was voted down by Brad Clark, Chad Collins, Lloyd Ferguson, Tom Jackson, Sam Merulla, Dave Mitchell, Maria Pearson and Terry Whitehead.

It was also strongly opposed by the general manager of the city’s economic development and planning division, Tim McCabe, who recommended the city “stay the course” and fight the provincial challenge.

“We feel we’ve justified this area,” argued McCabe. “We feel the number, just cutting it in half, is somewhat arbitrary. We feel the airport employment lands is critical to the future economic success of Hamilton. We know there’s going to be a fight. We think we should only fight this fight once.”

Guy Paparella, the director of airport development, responded with pointed criticism of provincial officials.
“Having been at those meetings over that six or eight months that we’ve discussed with the province about our assumptions, they have not provided any technical basis for their position,” he declared. “They have just indicated that they have a concern that it may not be, you know, sufficient to lead to a conclusion that meets the philosophy and the vision that they have.”