Feeling the pain of core's rebirth

(Mar 1, 2005)

It is not at all difficult to muster some sympathy for the citizens who have chosen to live within Kitchener's core. For many years, they suffered the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune -- stagnant population numbers, decaying neighbourhoods, inner-city school closures, drug and prostitution infestation and, not least, declining property values. Not surprisingly, the folks who live in Kitchener's core feel embattled, defensive and more than somewhat protective.

That was the then -- here is the now: Kitchener council has spent -- and is spending -- tens of millions of public dollars to help bring the city core back to life. The new city hall was the starting point. Then came a public land assembly of prime core property. Then came a new farmers' market.

The University of Waterloo school of pharmacy comes next, concurrent with the pending re-location of the Wilfrid Laurier University school of social work to the site of the former St. Jerome's high school. There continues to be talk of a new Kitchener public library downtown.

The TD Canada Trust bank demonstrated some faith in the core with a sparkling new office tower. Manulife has shifted operations into the downtown, as has the Stantec engineering firm. And The Record. And other businesses as well.

Kitchener's downtown, it is clear, is in the relatively early stages of what should be a lasting renewal. There are a number of medium-rise, condo-styled residential projects currently on the go and the pressure for high-density housing will only increase with the influx of UW and WLU students.

Waterloo Region, meanwhile, is getting ready to run an express bus line through the core from Waterloo into Cambridge. And at some point in the future, talk will get serious about an expensive fixed-rail link running north-south through the Kitchener core, again linking Waterloo and Cambridge. And Queen's Park, remember, has mounted a campaign against urban sprawl in southern Ontario, which will add to the pressures and opportunities in the Kitchener downtown, as it will elsewhere.

Against this backdrop of activity, against these inevitabilities, some people who live in the core area want to protect their neighbourhoods from what they see as unwelcome change. They are resisting a city hall plan that would allow 50 per cent of the space within family homes in the core to be used for business purposes, with up to three non-resident employees. Currently, any single-family home, anywhere in Kitchener, can have 25 per cent of its space utilized for business, with one non-resident employee.

Reasonable, well-intentioned people can argue the merits of this proposal from either side. Certainly, on behalf of core residents who object to the plan -- and who have already lived through some very difficult years -- the desire for neighbourhood stability is fully understandable.

But, on the other hand, is this a fight they can win? Can residential, single-family neighbourhoods stay that way as the pressure for housing and business intensification grows? Can those same neighbourhoods -- assuming that city hall is successful in re-shaping the downtown into something attractive -- resist the condo builder, the office developer, the business-minded zone-changer? In all likelihood, no, because land values in the core will have grown to the point where single-family housing may not represent the most potentially profitable use of land and buildings.

In the meantime, city hall does have a role to play. City hall does need to listen to those affected by change and it must work in concert with homeowners -- perhaps on signage issues, perhaps on hours of operation -- to help ensure neighbourhood stability.

Because oddly -- and quite perversely -- some of the people who may be most hurt by the Kitchener core's rebirth are the very ones who toughed it out through the bad times. The pendulum of redevelopment has started to swing -- and for some, it just won't stop where they want it to.