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Aerotropolis not part of GRIDS?
September 22, 2005
City officials appear to want to separate the proposed aerotropolis from the city's 30-year GRIDS growth plan, but not all staff are reading from the same playbook. The confusion was evident at the planning committee this week with one senior staffer appearing to contradict another senior staff member.
Aerial photo of current airport.
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Guy Paparella, the city's director of strategic initiatives and the point man for the aerotropolis, told councillors that a $90,000 plan to update airport noise forecasts is being done "to help us with our GRIDS process [and] also with our aerotropolis initiative".
But the general manager of the planning department promptly squelched that connection. Leigh-Ann Coveyduck said the noise exposure study "will fit into the aerotropolis as opposed to within the GRIDS process".
This is just the latest twist in a controversy that includes a provincial government challenge that council is proceeding prematurely with its aerotropolis plans before completing GRIDS (Growth Related Integrated Development Strategy). That challenge was originally presented in a mid-June letter to council from the Ministry of Municipal Affairs which advised the city not to proceed with a 3100 acre urban boundary expansion around the airport. When the majority of council ignored the advice, the province joined several local residents in appealing the decision to the Ontario Municipal Board in late July.
 Now facing a hearing before the Board, the city presumably must decide if the aerotropolis is part of GRIDS, or if they can argue it can proceed separately from the growth strategy.
GRIDS is supposed to provide the overall direction for Hamilton to 2031 including the accommodation of expected growth in employment and housing. The aerotropolis plan came out of the city's economic development department and the private company that manages the airport. Both originated several years ago and appeared to be travelling on the same track.
For example, aerotropolis was included in the "GRIDS - Growth Options" study released in March of this year and prepared by Dillon Consulting. However, the Dillon study determined that the aerotropolis plans contradicted at least seven of the nine principles that are supposed to be guiding GRIDS. The following month, council instructed its staff to present a plan to move ahead with aerotropolis.
That came to the planning committee on June 7 in the form of the 3100 acre boundary expansion, and immediately ran into a wall of opposition. At that meeting, Paparella declared: " GRIDS is the mechanism that helps us implement council's strategic direction and aerotropolis is part and parcel of that process." He went on to explain why it was okay to proceed with the aerotropolis before GRIDS was completed.
"Will this amendment undermine GRIDS? In a word, No. In discussions with staff, [GRIDS manager] Steve Robichaud in particular, it's very clear all the six growth concepts which he has formulated and put forward and are before the public now, include and accommodate employment growth. All concepts include the aerotropolis cluster. All of them. We're not streaming. We're not scoping. They all include an aerotropolis cluster. Whichever growth concept council chooses from that process, will include an aerotropolis cluster. Also in the servicing scenarios for employment land around the airport is focused by creating this aerotropolis cluster. By putting more defined boundaries around what we mean by aerotropolis cluster, it focuses the effort or our master servicing exercise to ensure that we have appropriate and comprehensive reviews of all the master servicing that's required to deliver and implement the aerotropolis cluster. So in a word, it provides certainty. It provides long-term protection of airport and employment land which is a key cog in this whole exercise of community building, the need to improve our economic and sustainable job profile."
The city's webpage on GRIDS is located at
http://www.myhamilton.ca/myhamilton/CityandGovernment/
ProjectsInitiatives/GRIDS.
A report on the June 7 planning committee meeting can be found at
http://www.hamiltoncatch.org/planning/plan_050607a.htm.
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