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“The vision stated in the Master Plan,” the city’s letter noted, “is to ‘Create a community that integrates with the surrounding residential neighbourhoods and develops a cohesive network of year-round public open spaces and parks’. More analysis and work needs to be done on the Master Plan to achieve this vision.”

ClubLink, Sudds says, never responded to the city’s concerns, and instead simply let the clock run out.

Photo by Wayne Cuddington / jpg

“It was obviously very frustrating,” said Sudds on Sunday. “As a community, it is very unsettling. People are very upset about this. It’s been dragging on for over a year, and the city has, in my opinion, been doing a very thorough job of reviewing the application, and now ClubLink-Minto-Richcraft has decided to essentially bypass that process and go to LPAT, to the tribunal.”

Sudds added that city staff has spent a great deal of time and expertise reviewing the development application, and that the community has been very engaged, and the decision to go straight to appeal is “unfortunate.”

“Minto and Richcraft, I would suggest, pride themselves in being good community builders and partners in our city, and I personally don’t believe their actions on Friday, of moving to LPAT so quickly without giving the city the time and without responding frankly to the technical comments, that’s not a good community builder. That’s not what that looks like at all to me.”

Complicating matters is a legal challenge by ClubLink about whether it is bound by a 1981 agreement between the Municipality of Kanata and Campeau Corporation, the original developer in the area. That agreement stipulated that 40 per cent of the development remain green space. The golf course currently makes up about 30 per cent of that green space, or approximately 12 per cent on the community. According to the original agreement, the golf course must remain in perpetuity, and if ClubLink, Canada’s largest golf course operator, decides to cease its golf operations there, the city can take it over at no cost.