ward3brighton.ca

This recent article in the Guardian was not perfectly clear on a couple of points. First, council did not ‘OK’ the retail development in Winsloe because we had no power to okay it, or deny it. The development is taking place on a stretch of road that remains the jurisdiction of the provincial government. The developer acquired all the necessary approvals from the the provincial government and the project can go ahead regardless of city council’s opinion. The developer did volunteer to enter into a Development Agreement with the city’s Planning Department, which gives the city some assurance that the development will conform to certain standards, but that agreement has not, or had not, been signed.

Secondly, the city’s Planning Board recommended against an application to rezone a property on St. Peter’s Rd. for the purpose of a possible grocery store, among other things, because there are already two large parcels of land in the immediate vicinity that allow for commercial development such as supermarkets, shopping centres, grocery stores, retail stores, etc. Councillor Devine’s point, which was not entirely clear in the comments attributed to her, is that we need to strengthen the existing undeveloped commercial nodes in East Royalty, rather than creating more commercial space by rezoning existing residential property. The issue is not whether the residents of East Royalty should or should not have a supermarket or other commercial developments in their neighbourhood. It was the opinion of Planning Board that the property in question need not be rezoned for such development to take place in East Royalty.

Incidentally, this story sparked a conversation with a small grocery store operator in my ward yesterday. He expressed surprise that anyone would want into the increasingly competitive and difficult grocery market in Charlottetown. For small operators such as him, Sunday shopping has simply made an already crowded market even more difficult to compete in.