BarrieToday welcomes letters to the editor at [email protected]. Please include your daytime phone number and address (for verification of authorship, not publication). The following letter is from Barrie resident Terry Forrester in response to a story titled 'Waterfront highrise developer offers to shorten two towers' published on Dec. 11.
*************************
Some items on the response from the developer are curious.
First, I was amazed at the short amount of time it took for the developer to get back to planning staff with a response. It was almost like someone with insight into the inner working of the city council took it upon themselves to make a call and provide some direction.
Second, the fact that they proposed a purely token decrease by seven storeys on the proposed 46-storey tower to 39 floors, and then dropped by one storey on the 39-storey tower, the other two towers at 25 and 36 storeys stayed the same.
Third, the next item was the decrease of the podium height adjacent to 2 Toronto St., to 26 metres. Twenty-six metres is still 85 feet, 85 feet of vertical concrete – now that is something that we all want to see on our walks along the bay.
I do respect the fact that some work was done by the developer, but it falls far short of what I believe the majority of us are talking about with the respect to the height and the size of this mega project. If SmartCentre wants to be a “good neighbour,” they should listen to the neighborhood. The neighbourhood wants a reduced size and scale for this project so it can mirror what is around the lake currently.
Council should not be too quick to coin phrases like “altered in a substantial way” where, in fact, most of us, again, would say that this is not the case. Barrie city planning staff should not be directing council with comments that are weighted by their own opinions; they should provide facts and leave the final outcome to our elected officials.
Comments like “further delays and reconsiderations of these applications will not advance the proposal and will not yield a different position from the applicant (SmartCentres) or the community, or a different professional planning opinion from the staff.”
The elected council should move at the direction of their constituents, and that is “Do not to move in favour of this revised response from the developer and continue to negotiate for reduced height on the towers."
Terry Forrester
Barrie
*************************
