Charelle EVELYN Citizen staff
Faced with a veritable wall of opposition, city council ultimately sided with neighbours who didn't want to see a former golf course turned into an RV dealership.
On Monday night, city council voted 8-1 against a zoning and official community plan change that would turn a portion of Yellowhead Grove golf course into a new Woody's RV location.
Coun. Garth Frizzell cast the lone vote in favour of the application.
The vote came after a two-and-a-half-hour public hearing, in which a cavalcade of residents voiced their opposition to the plan, citing concerns ranging from increased traffic levels, to noise and light pollution, to potential loss of property values.
The nearly five-hectare site proposal for the northern portion of the golf course and two adjacent residential properties included a building, parking for RV sales and customers and a storm drainage pond. The Alberta-based franchise had also agreed to register a covenant on the property limiting it to RV sales and service and to restrict the building size to address any concerns about water flow requirements.
Alberto Simoes prepared a lengthy presentation outlining his opposition to the proposal.
"Our quality of life is seriously depleted," he said, also adding that going ahead with the change would produce "catastrophic results" for the neighbourhood.
According to Simoes and other residents who spoke during the public hearing, extra traffic - especially large motor homes, trailers and other commercial vehicles - on Bunce Road would endanger children walking to and from Vanway elementary school.
Access to the business would not be allowed off of Highway 16, according to city staff as well as Glenn Stanker, the transportation engineer who did a traffic impact study for the applicant.
Recreational vehicle sales are typically low-traffic generators, said the proponents, especially during the winter months.
Woody's RV World president Darren Paylor also said they are cognizant of neighbourhood concerns and that they don't use semi-trailers to bring vehicles and equipment to the site. They also don't allow deliveries outside of regular business hours between 8 a.m. and
5 p.m., Monday through Friday.
"We're not a Walmart or (another large) retailer," Paylor said, noting the business would have approximately eight larger shipments per year, brought in on small-bed trailers.
But regardless of city council's decision - and some neighbours' desire for the land to stay as a recreational use - the property will not remain a golf course.
"What really put the death knell in this being used a golf course was the expansion that's coming of the highway right-of-way which is going to take quite a bit of property along the highway and it's going to make too much loss of land to make it sustainable for a golf course," said Dan Adamson, project development director for Radloff and Associates. "The land use change is inevitable here."
Former Yellowhead Grove owner Keith Good, who signed over the property to Woody's RV World as of Jan. 5, said he was surprised by Monday night's decision.
Good said he was aware there was opposition to the proposal, but that there was also petitions of support - particularly from those who were none too pleased by errant golf balls flying from the property.
City council's rejection of the plan was particularly surprising, he said, given that the golf course is definitely gone.
"You were kind of going to get your cake and eat it, too. They were going to keep the greenspace look and bring a company to town that was going to invest a lot of money and arguably pay more (in taxes) than I was paying as a golf course," Good said.
"Now we're going to have an overgrown, weeded field sitting there for somebody else to try and do something with. I don't know what's going to happen."
A representative from Woody's RV World could not be reached as of press time for comment on the next steps.
"What I think we really need in this area is a neighbourhood plan," said Coun. Jillian Merrick, whose fellow councillors also echoed the idea that something would have to be done with the land eventually.
While councillors Frank Everitt and Terri McConnachie considered the potential of approving the application if certain conditions could be placed on it - such as working with the Ministry of Transportation for a different access point off of Highway 16 or ensuring Woody's installed sidewalks - Coun. Brian Skakun said it wasn't their job to massage the proposal in favour of the applicant.
Coun. Murry Krause agreed.
"We're trying to fit a square peg in a round hole," he said.
