A last-minute attempt by several developers to have the Backlands rezoned as part of the city’s RP+5 planning process should be rejected by Halifax Regional Council on February 25, says a group of Purcell’s Cove area residents.
At its last meeting on February 11, Council was scheduled to hear First Reading of the new draft Regional Municipal Planning Strategy – including the sudden rezoning request from Clayton Developments and three other major landowners – and to set a date for a public hearing. Three Council members were absent so the matter was deferred to February 25.
“This represents a substantive change to the current Draft Plan, and it’s not appropriate to slide it in at such a late stage in the process,” says Catherine McKinnon of the Purcell’s Cove Residents Action Committee. “The RP+5 process provided many opportunities for input, and a previous request for re-designation last July was already soundly rejected.”
The Action Committee is asking area residents, and everyone in HRM who values the unique Backlands wilderness, to contact their councillors and urge them to remove the developers’ request from consideration in the final stages of the RP+5 process. (See the attached Feb. 12 letter from the Committee to Stephen Adams, Councillor for District 11.)
The rezoning request is outlined in a letter from Mr. Peter M. Rogers Q.C., McInnes Cooper Lawyers, sent on behalf of several property owners whose lands abut Purcell’s Cove Road, including Clayton Developments, Battery Hill Developments, Bess Developments and Tanya/Roderick Morrison. Dated November 26, 2013, the letter was submitted to Council by Mr. Adams, and became publicly available very recently as Attachment I in the Council documents for the Feb. 11 Council meeting. (See attached letter.)
“Time is of the essence,” says Rogers in the letter, adding “our clients realize that the RP+5 process is drawing to an end.” The letter formally requests that the 10 properties – comprising several hundred hectares of the Purcell’s Cove Backlands – be re-designated to “Rural Commuter” from the current “Urban Reserve” designation, and that they be rezoned to H (Holding) Zone.
“This will enable the lands to once again be developed with on-site services in accordance with the Regional Subdivision By-Law,” Rogers writes.
But circumstances do not warrant the rezoning and re-designation of the lands in question, according to HRM staff in their Regional Plan Review Report dated January 14, 2014. (See attached.) The city already has an ample 28-to-35-year supply of serviceable suburban land available for development, notes the staff report, which also highlights the “substantial (public) resistance” to large-scale development of the Backlands.
The staff report states, “Any move to change the development potential of these lands should be based on a greater understanding of the environmental constraints, their value as part of HRM’s natural corridors (to be considered through the Greenbelting and Public Open Space Priority Plan), implications of development for mobility concerns and the broader road network.”
This critical new juncture in the RP+5 process also makes it timely to announce the formation of the new Backlands Coalition, to be officially launched this Friday, February 21. Five community organizations have so far signed on, with the common goal of finding solutions to protect the Backlands in a permanent way as the threat of development continues. Details will also be released shortly on a new ecological assessment of plant communities, which documents a “nationally unique and globally rare” plant community found throughout the Backlands. An earlier study also found the area to be an important sanctuary for breeding and migratory birds.
For more details on the new Backlands Coalition, see our Facebook page and website: http://backlandscoalition.ca
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