Rookie councillors ready for action

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This article was published 13/11/2018 (2663 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

City council newcomers Sherri Rollins (Fort Rouge-East Fort Garry) and Kevin Klein (Charleswood-Tuxedo) will get their first taste of civic politics tonight when they take part in separate development hearings on two controversial projects.

The court-ordered hearing for developer Andrew Marquess’s Fulton Grove project will be heard at the city centre community committee, where Rollins will sit down with Couns. John Orlikow (River Heights-Fort Garry) and Cindy Gilroy (Daniel McIntyre) to consider the project, which the administration has already rejected.

At the same time, Klein will join Couns. Scott Gillingham (St. James) and Janice Lukes (Waverley West) for the rezoning of the old Vimy Arena site to make way for the Bruce Oake Recovery Centre.

Marquess went to court to force city hall to hold the hearing on the property rezoning and a secondary plan for the Parker Lands. The planning department is opposed to the project as it’s proposed, claiming Marquess wants too many units for the property, and because he cleared the forest that planners wanted to be maintained as public space.

To complicate matters, Marquess recently filed a lawsuit against city hall and several senior administrators in the planning department, alleging they exercised an abuse of power by deliberately delaying the project application and preventing it from going to a public hearing. City hall has denied the allegations.

Marquess said the administrative reports to tonight’s meeting show the planning department is determined to do whatever it takes to stop the project. He held a news conference Friday, alleging city hall is in contempt of the court ruling, as he doesn’t believe the administration will allow his proposals to be considered by the committee.

“They are very clearly communicating they are going to shelve the development,” Marquess told the Free Press. “I’d hope that we could have a normal hearing but the (administrative) reports are so full of misrepresentations and untruthful statements.”

The recovery centre seems to have drawn support from right across the city but it divided the Crestview neighbourhood, where it’s planned on the banks of the Sturgeon Creek.

Area residents were disappointed with how Mayor Brian Bowman worked behind the scenes for months with the provincial government and the Oake family before disclosing the arena site is the preferred location. Other residents reacted negatively to the prospect of 50 drug addicts trying to get straight while living in their neighbourhood and the loss of public recreational space.

Scott Oake, the sports broadcaster, said he’s looking forward to the hearing.

Oake said the family foundation modified its plans for the recovery centre, adding it’s prepared to allow free public access to the facility’s gym through a separate public access if the project is approved.

“We heard what residents had to say at our first public consultations in August and the plans were modified accordingly,” Oake said in an email to the Free Press.

Also today, Rollins and the other councillors on the city centre community committee will consider plans to convert the former Academy Uptown bowling alley into a mixed-use, 23-unit residential development with office and retail space.

aldo.santin@freepress.mb.ca