Treed property near Jackson Park had to be cleared, owner says

WindsorStar.com
Nov. 2, 2017
Brian Cross

A scrubby 11-acre property across the railroad tracks from Jackson Park has been largely cleared of trees and levelled by its longtime owner, who says he had no choice.

“Frankly, I’m the last guy who’d want to cut the trees,” said Ralph Meo, president of  Virpina Inc., whose family has owned the land since 1984. Before that, it was part of the Woodall Golf Centre which featured a par-3 course and driving range on land that was bisected when the Ouellette Avenue overpass was built over the tracks. The land to the west ended up being developed into a shopping centre, now home of the Great Canadian Super Centre.

But despite many ideas to develop the largely landlocked land on the east side of Ouellette, nothing ever materialized. Meo described it as one of the largest pieces of vacant land in the core area of the city.

“My family, we nurtured the trees for all those years and nurtured the property for all those years, but it got to the point it wasn’t viable to leave it the way it was,” said Meo, the owner of Seven Lakes Golf Course where, he said, he’s planted more than 5,000 trees over the years and returned 90 acres to woodlots, wetlands and ponds.

“I’m a guy who does like trees, who does like the natural environment, but I guess everything in the appropriate place.”

He said the site couldn’t remain as it was because many of the trees had died, victims of either the emerald ash borer, standing water that suffocated the roots, or old age. The grass was becoming difficult to cut and pooling water was making it a potential breeding ground for West Nile-infected mosquitoes, he said. He also feared a lawsuit should a tree limb from a dead tree fall and strike someone walking through the property.

Meo said crews have been busy for more than a year cutting down trees and adding about three feet of fill to make the land less flood-prone. They plan on adding topsoil and seeding it with grass or other vegetation.

“We just thought it was best to get it all done and hopefully at some point develop it.”

For Rick Woodall, who spent his childhood on the property when it was run as a golf course by his family, seeing the property cleared is “kind of sad.”

“When I was a kid I grew up there, and that was our family business for my entire childhood,” said Woodall, whose father Richard owned the golf course, fronting Dougall Avenue, for 51 years. He died last year.

After it closed as a golf course, the big beautiful trees and a substantial pond made the property a kind of urban oasis, Rick Woodall said. Kids would frequent the pond to catch pollywogs and fish and play hockey in winter. Teens would go there for dates. In recent years, people were still using the woodlot for walks, he said.

He said that clearing it now, “doesn’t seem to make a whole lot of sense,” unless Meo is cleaning it up to make it look more presentable for development.

“But it’s his property, he can do what he wants.”

The city has no bylaw that controls tree cutting on private property, said city forester Paul Giroux, whose office is located a short distance away from the property and has watched it being cleared. He went back and looked at satellite images of the site from 2015 and said he wouldn’t classify it as a woodlot. “I’d call it scattered trees.”

Meo said the property isn’t for sale. He said a group of oak trees in better condition, located in a small section close to Ouellette, have been retained. “We’re hoping they’ll be able to survive.”

Meo said finding a use for the land has been a “bit of a challenge” over the years. It’s zoned commercial, so there was talk of building medical offices there, similar to the Jackson Park Health Centre immediately to the south. But that idea was doused by news that the new acute care hospital to replace the three hospital sites in the city will be located out on County Road 42, he said.

“One has to give serious thought to how much medical facilities are going to be needed in that part of the city.”

Meo said once there’s a plan for the property, he’s hoping to plant new trees in the proper location.

“The better way to go is, once the location of any buildings or development features are fixed, we would do a proper planting at that time.”