Related article form the Star:
Bond Head fears development's changes
Jun. 22, 2006. 05:58 AM
GAIL SWAINSON
STAFF REPORTER
Back in the 1960s, Robert Keffer's family sold their Vaughan dairy farm and headed north to Bond Head to escape the steady march of development.
Keffer's grandfather thought he had moved the family farm operation far enough away so their rural way of life would never again be under threat.
It appears he was wrong.
Now, Keffer and his neighbours in this hamlet near Bradford, just on York Region's northern edge, are bracing for residential development on a grand scale that's coming soon to their community.
The proposal is starting rather small: just 1,600 homes and 4,700 new people in this hamlet of 1,000 residents.
But if the developers get their way — and they usually do — within the next 20 years Bond Head and neighbouring Bradford will be engulfed by a massive subdivision with some 75,000 new residents.
That has many locals worried that along with the tens of thousands of new people crowding in, big city problems such as crime and gridlock will also take up home in their bucolic village.
For Keffer, the fight to maintain the community's rural character has taken on an almost personal note. "There's an attachment to the land that is hard to describe," Keffer said from the comfortable farmhouse kitchen at his spread just north of Greater Toronto.
"This is a good agricultural area here," he added. "Farmland is a finite resource and it's a duty and responsibility of citizens to look after it."
Many locals are puzzled about the sudden push for such titanic, instant expansion, especially since Queen's Park hasn't earmarked the Bradford area for residential growth in its Places to Grow Act, which became law last week.
Development supporters — many of them on the local council — respond that the area needs jobs and the kind of growth that will pay for badly needed infrastructure such as sewage plants.
Bradford West Gwillimbury has 23,000 residents, about 1,000 of these in Bond Head. The town's own official plan projects a total population of 47,000 by 2026.
Last week, Bradford West Gwillimbury council voted 5-3 to amend the town's official plan to allow for the first 1,600 homes phase of the development plan.
However, that is likely just the beginning. Toronto-based builders Geranium Corp. and Metrus Developments are hoping to ultimately develop a project that could add as many as 75,000 people to the town.
Geranium spokesman Jim Maclean said the bigger project has been put on the backburner for now.
"Right now, Geranium's priority is to go ahead with what they have," Maclean said in an interview.
And despite their fears, residents will continue to have input, he said.
"The public consultation process will continue into the months and years ahead," Maclean added. "They will have a voice."
`We have a great fear of losing the character of our community'
David Chambers, resident of Bradford West Gwillimbury
Many locals aren't so sure that two big-city developers will want to listen to what they have to say. More than 100 of them filled the council chambers to voice their concerns when council approved the plan over their objections.
Resident David Chambers told council he fears such monumental growth will forever change the look and feel of his village.
"We have a great fear of losing the character of our community," Chambers said.
But Councillor Doug White says the community is chronically overtaxed and underserviced, something residential development and the employment park will help ease.
White said the town desperately needs the employment lands slated for Highway 400 south of Highway 88 to help offset the municipality's high residential property taxes.
"A lot of people would be comfortable if we stayed the way we already are, but the Bond Head area was designated for growth," White told residents.
Keffer has a 130-hectare mixed farming operation with 45 Holsteins and some wheat, corn and soy as cash crops perched on the northern edge of the Holland Marsh.
The area is quintessential farm country with softly rolling hills and wide-open fields punctuated by dense forests.
Keffer's son Matthew just graduated from agricultural college and is primed to take over the family farm.
But if the town is eventually built out, the gravel road the farm sits on will become a paved overpass off Highway 400 and development will push right into his front yard.
"We'll try and stay as long as we can make a good living farming," Keffer shrugged. "But who knows what will happen."
Phil Trow, a teacher who lives nearby, grabs a sandwich off a plate set out on the farmhouse table by Keffer's wife Jean.
He said area residents could see the writing on the wall two years ago when Geranium celebrated Earth Day by setting out their proposal before town council.
It was then that worried locals asked the province to include the southern half of Simcoe County in the greenbelt in the hopes of halting such massive change. But their pleas went unheard. Bradford West Gwillimbury sits just north of the Oak Ridges Moraine and the greenbelt.
"It's not that we are opposed to growth," said Trow, who is also chair of a citizens' opposition group called Bond Head/BWG Residents for Responsible Development. "We just want something that is measured. 75,000 new people will create a city up here."
Many say this kind of development just north of Greater Toronto was predictable, particularly after the province protected a large swath of land on Toronto's northern border from development under the greenbelt plan.
A recent study by Hemson Consulting shows Simcoe County is a prime area for migration from elsewhere in the province, especially the GTA.
The county's population grew by 14.3 per cent in the most recent census period, the highest in central Ontario outside Greater Toronto. By 2031, the population is expected to grow to 667,000 from 427,000.
AoD
