ClubLink clears another legal hurdle to contentious housing development
ClubLink is now one step closer to replacing the Kanata Golf and Country Club with 1,480 housing units — a proposal that prompted a maelstrom of local opposition and a failed attempt by the City of Ottawa to argue its case at the Supreme Court.
Central to the debate is a 1981 agreement to protect "open space."
The City won the court challenge in this years-long legal odyssey. An Ontario Supreme Court ruling reversed that decision in favour of owner ClubLink, finding the corporation shouldn't be "saddled with a perpetual obligation" to run a golf course.
Friday's decision expanded on that ruling, declaring more aspects of the agreement "inoperable."
"It's clearly very disappointing," said Barbara Ramsay, chair of the Kanata Greenspace Protection Coalition. "It's a complicated problem, a really complicated problem."
Whether this is the final chapter of this particular dispute is unclear, but Ramsay definitively stated people in Kanata are not done fighting.
ClubLink's latest proposal for land currently home to the Kanata Golf and Country Club includes 1,480 units. (City of Ottawa)
'Original intent' not to bar development, court finds
The pre-amalgamation City of Kanata entered into a series of agreements with former owner Campeau Corporation in the 1980s, which laid out rules to incorporate a golf course to align with rules dictating that 40 per cent remain open space.
The latest decision stated the "original intent" of these documents left the door open to future development.
Included in the 54-page decision were copies of the agreements, with all references to future operations on the golf course and the 40 per cent rule crossed out.
Justice Marc Labrosse invited parties to write to him if there's a dispute on how to interpret his findings.
City solicitor David White said his department is reviewing the decision, along with external counsel, and will provide a detailed report to councillors "in the coming days." A lawyer for ClubLink declined to comment.
Community can't handle development, coalition argues
When it announced the development in 2018, the corporation stated that golf courses are struggling to exist in Ottawa's oversaturated market because of rising maintenance costs.
As an intervener on the case, the greenspace coalition is not in a position to continue this particular legal battle.
But Ramsay said the community has other irons in the fire.
Barbara Ramsay's home backs onto the Kanata Golf and Country Club. She said the community will continue to fight the proposed development. (Hillary Johnstone/CBC News)
People who live in the hundreds of homes bordering the course worry the area cannot handle this kind of sharp intensification, she said, especially when it comes to stormwater management.
Right now water from the surrounding community drains into the course's permeable land, said Ramsay. Once the area is regraded, she worries that water will flow back into people's homes.
Given recent environmental concerns, Ramsay said ears are now open to the argument.
"In 2018, all we heard was criticism that it was a NIMBY [or, not in my backyard] argument," he said. "It's never been a NIMBY argument. It has been an argument about a violation of a strategically created and planned community."
