Keep Vaughan Green wins against developer's motion to dismiss case at Ontario Land Tribunal

Resident group pushes back on development, citing houses too close to Humber River

Yorkregion.com
June 16, 2023
Brian Capitao

A coalition of residents called “Friends of Keep Vaughan Green” have reason to celebrate.

Friends to Keep Vaughan Green, or KVG for short, defeated a motion to dismiss their case against Clubhouse Development Inc., the company that purchased the historic golf course, the Country Club. The motion to dismiss the appeal did not meet the high threshold for dismissal.

Originally, Clubhouse proposed 1,215 new homes to be developed on the land, which was rejected by city council. The developer then whittled that down 662 single-detached homes and was approved by council in 2021.

KVG was against the idea and filed a case against the developer as it would “remove open space,” an argument that developer Clubhouse argues is erroneous as the public did not have right-to-access on private property.

However, the Ontario Land Tribunal (OLT) did field KVG’s concerns regarding the developer’s plan to build.

“Based on the issues raised in the notices of appeal, the tribunal finds that there are authentic land use planning issues capable of adjudication upon which evidence will be called. Numerous tribunal and board decisions have found that an appellant need not establish in its response to a motion to dismiss that the appeals will succeed, but rather they must establish that there are planning grounds worthy of adjudication. The tribunal is satisfied that Friends have met this test,” states the OLT decision.

KVG contends that there are serious environmental concerns, citing “shallow stormwater ponds during the summer months will exceed the thermal tolerance of cold water fish species” and that “the removal of 0.63 hectares of tableland woodland is not consistent with the York Regional Official Plan (YROP) since the woodland supports an endangered species (the little brown myotis bat, a species-at-risk (SAR)) and therefore meets one of the criteria for significant woodlands.”

The development, though approved by city council, is on hold for now.

“Residents who play by the rules and respect the laws and bylaws of a city should be respected, especially when developers come looking for significant changes to an official plan, which is really the guarantee of good community design,” said David Donnelly, counsel for KVG, in a press release sent out by the group.