{"id":10294,"date":"2015-04-09T00:11:33","date_gmt":"2015-04-09T04:11:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=10294"},"modified":"2015-04-15T17:17:52","modified_gmt":"2015-04-15T21:17:52","slug":"neighbours-irked-by-communications-over-drive-thru","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/neighbours-irked-by-communications-over-drive-thru\/","title":{"rendered":"Neighbours irked by communications over drive-thru"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n

Plans for a two-lane drive thru on Bayview Avenue at Pedersen Drive were given the green light at Council last week, but enthusiasm was lukewarm from Councillors and residents alike. <\/p>\n

Several residents living in the southwest quadrant of Bayview and St. John\u2019s Sideroad came to Town Hall last week to sound off on plans for a McDonald\u2019s drive-thru in a plaza proposed for the area.<\/p>\n

Zoning for the restaurant, however, was approved by Council over 15 years ago and, despite residents\u2019 complaints, there was little to be done.
\nThe restaurant in question was initially proposed for the northeast corner of the busy intersection, but the company ultimately changed course, moving further south on Bayview. <\/p>\n

\u201cOur home is actually 400 metres from [the site] and we have decided to put our house up for sale,\u201d said resident Lisa Surgenor. \u201cIt is simply not acceptable and I really would like to express how upsetting it is.\u201d<\/p>\n

This view was bolstered at the podium by Jason Surgenor who said he was disappointed as the new location was closer to area residences. The proposed restaurant would, he argue, pose traffic challenges to the neighbourhood as well, and contribute to increased litter, noise pollution and \u201cloitering youth.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI have two young children and they like to walk on the sidewalks and bike through there,\u201d he said. \u201cI don\u2019t want them exposed to any further commercial traffic going through there. It is crazy enough at Earl Stewart and Pedersen where I see residents getting into accidents because they don\u2019t obey the stop sign and I can see that increasing with commercial truck traffic and people coming to the restaurant.<\/p>\n

\u201cI just spent close to $25,000 two years ago to landscape [my yard] so we can enjoy it. I anticipate smelling grease in the summertime is going to be an issue. The biggest concern is the drop in property value. I don\u2019t want to see my property values involved because there is a McDonald\u2019s there.\u201d
\nAdded teacher Laura Panero: \u201cWe have two local elementary schools that are just down the road. It is a five minute walk. As a teacher, we spend a lot of our day talking about healthy initiatives, healthy eating and trying to promote healthy eating in young children. Obesity is a problem and what do we do? We put a McDonald\u2019s right in the middle of a subdivision. This is an issue everyone needs to work towards.\u201d<\/p>\n

There is only so much room in which to work, argued Council.<\/p>\n

\u201cCouncil does not determine tenants, we determine land use,\u201d said Mayor Geoff Dawe.<\/p>\n

This was a view shared by municipal staff. According to Marco Ramunno, Aurora\u2019s Director of Planning, approvals for the commercial use, including restaurants, stretches back to 1994. Drive thru uses were approved for the site in 1998.<\/p>\n

\u201cConsidering the amount of time and the amount of study that has been involved in establishing this as a commercial corridor with a number of restaurants and drive thru facilities along that corridor, in my opinion it is a suitable location for this type of commercial development.\u201d
\nIn his view, if Council disagreed and the developers took the matter to the Ontario Municipal Board, the Town of Aurora would not be successful in defending their position against it. <\/p>\n

\u201cI sympathise with the residents who may not want a specific use or a specific tenant [but] we don\u2019t have the authority under the planning act to limit that type of tenant who comes in,\u201d said Councillor Paul Pirri. \u201cWe look at the zoning as a whole, we look at the uses as a whole, but not the individual tenants. I understand the frustration and the anger of residents who don\u2019t like seeing what is proposed, but there is really not much we can do, if anything, that falls in line with our legal requirements and purview.\u201d
\nThis was the general feeling around the room.<\/p>\n

\u201cI sympathise, but there is really not much room to do anything here,\u201d agreed Councillor Jeff Thom. \u201cIf we move forward, we just have to make sure that if we do have bylaws [on odour and outdoor maintenance] they are being respected. If smells are a huge problem, there are ways companies can mitigate smells from fast food restaurants.\u201d<\/p>\n

Communication with residents, however, was of some concern to Council. As this land was previously zoned for this purpose, it was not required to inform neighbouring residents about the item on last Tuesday\u2019s Council agenda. This was a move residents opposed and another platform on which Council expressed sympathy, asking for a better way forward in the future.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have a responsibility to communicate better to the residents to help them understand the differences in the process, as well as the fact of what the municipal role is in land use planning,\u201d said Councillor Michael Thompson. \u201cAs we have seen many times before, people look to this Council as the ultimate authority when it comes to land use planning and yet we\u2019re bound by the planning act, provincial policy statements with regards to land use planning and if we don\u2019t adhere to them, we can always be challenged at the OMB which ultimately makes the final ruling and it rules based on the letter of the law and the Planning Act.<\/p>\n

\u201cUltimately, it is the taxpayers\u2019 money and we shouldn\u2019t use it to avoid our duty to adhere to the plans and let the OMB make the decision when we know that in this case the site has been allowed forever. The tenant is immaterial. The use has always been there.\u201d<\/p>\n

And the use is already in place, argued Councillor John Abel, citing numerous restaurants in the immediate vicinity of the proposed location. \u201cCertain restaurants\u201d experience a \u201cbacklash\u201d but he said he sees McDonald\u2019s as an employer that actively contributes to the community.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey have changed,\u201d he said. \u201cThey have had to bring around the menu to structure for different people\u2019s tastes and they continue to be successful. This was zoned before your house was built, before you purchased it, and for us to try and turn it around would be a costly venture that would not succeed and that has been documented with residents before.\u201d<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Plans for a two-lane McDonald’s drive thru on Bayview Avenue at Pedersen Drive were given the green light at Council last week<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10294","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-2G2","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-09-14 19:15:16","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10294","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10294"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10294\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}