*** Sign the re2021 Petition to the City ***

Any upcoming subdivision development on this site should include the preservation of a significant ecological corridor that includes our cherished Nickeldale Forest Walking Trail. Please sign the Petition and show your support for ‘complete and walkable’ communities. Let’s only develop communities with enhanced liveability features, and good community design.

***If you have any issues or trouble adding your name to the list, just send your name and email to [email protected] with ‘add me to the Petition’ in the subject line and we will add your name manually. ‘***

Thank you for checking out and hopefully signing the petition.

We know a development is going to continue. This is not a NIMBY movement. We accept that the future of Sudbury is a fluid process, and areas get developed, but we were promised a different kind of development, and that development had two things: access to our multi-use Nickledale Forest Trail with some of it’s green-space, and it had a full Montrose meandering, to keep the traffic from over-whelming the neighborhood.

Now this current plan, as it sits right now, is not that plan that we were promised. See What happened to the 2014 Villages of Montrose Conceptual Masterplan?

So, the re-draft we expect, should find some balance between what that plan presented and promised us, and what is possible to do.

If you want to see our vision of what is possible, and possibly the best we could do, see the article Is there an alternative community design?

There you will see a full sat view of 2/3 of the whole area of the site, developed as a community that has something for everyone. Hopefully it can at least put another perspective in mind, and of course it has trails, green-space, and many other liveability features, that any community would be proud to have integrated into it.

If you hover over the linked image in different places, you should bring up the descriptions of the various features. See if you can find the embedded Seniors Living Complex.  Hint, it’s in a place that families could live around, and easily come over and share time outside with their loved ones. Second hint, it has a little outside nordic spa pool and sauna.

But there’s a Community Holistic Health and Healing Center up the road for the rest of the community too.

That’s just part of what we mean when we say these communities should be planned with liveability built in.

Live, learn, work, play, enjoy the outdoors, and be surrounded by happy, friendly, and healthy people in the community around you.

That’s what design can do, if you do design right.

So, what you get is what you stand for, and if want to make it something you want to see Sudbury evolve into, then stand for it, and stand with us, for it, and let’s get the City to want it too.

Once we all get used to fact that Sudbury can be better, in so many ways, we start to feel hopeful again, and we start to feel like change is good, and yeah, the developers will feel like that too.

Let’s go developers. Let’s make Sudbury awesome!

We don’t want to have to Petition for better and more appropriate design, we want to cheer on the good design, and celebrate new communities that have it right.

Yeah! Let’s get it right.

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The Petition Letter reads as follows:

To the attention of Alex Singbush, Wendy Kaufman, and team at Greater Sudbury Planning Services Division.

We endorse and agree with the view that Greater Sudbury Planning Services, and City Council
should not allow the development situated at the northern end of Montrose Blvd., as defined in the Sept. 1, 2021 Dalron Construction re-draft of a proposed subdivision plan, to go forward as planned.

The Nickeldale Montose ‘Royal Oaks’ proposed subdivision plan on Part of Lot 2&3, Concession 6, Geographic Township of McKim, commissioned by Dalron Construction from Tulloch, Arva, R.V. Anderson and Associates, does not reflect the ‘complete and well-designed’ subdivision that we need the future of Greater Sudbury to be built upon. It does not fulfill the current nor future community needs.

The R.V. Anderson homepage at https://rvanderson.com/ states clearly their Environmental Mission the following: “R.V. Anderson Associates Limited is committed to the principle of responsible stewardship of the environment. We will endeavour to ensure the well-being of our environment and that of future generations by considering the impact of our decisions and practices on the long-term viability of this planet.”

This is a good statement, in principle.

The reason why we are objecting to the Dalron Construction proposed work as presented by this draft, is that the design of this subdivision does not reflect a fuller appreciation of all the factors that would ensure the community social and environmental well-being, nor does it fully reflect a plan that preserves important ecological corridors for future generations.

In so Dalron Construction presenting this draft proposal to Greater Sudbury Planning Services, Growth and Infrastructure Department, and City Council, we would ask that Council, and the Planning Committee re-consider the full implications and impact of the proposal’s approval as is, upon the members of the surrounding community, citizens of New Sudbury, and the community at large.

The following are the issues we have with this Dalron subdivision proposal:

1. The current draft completely deletes an ecologically significant greenspace, that provides great benefit to the community. It takes away an existing urban design asset, connector trail, and liveability feature of the existing community. The forest nature walking trail embedded within this corridor connects Montrose Blvd., and the existing Villages of Montrose and surrounding streets to the east, with Magnolia Blvd., and the New Sudbury historical trail to the west. The current draft makes the community less connected, less liveable, and less healthy.

1a. It does not maintain any of the community activated public ecological greenspace that also acts as a buffer between a proposed new development and the existing residential neighborhood to the south of it.
For a more complete community feedback and perspective on the preservation of at least this corridor we refer to as the Nickeldale Forest Walking Trail, please reference our community built website at https://re2021.com

2. Much more time, consideration, and community consultation should be given to examine the concerns and implications of any connection between Maley Dr. and Forestdale Drive and Montrose Ave., as such connections are fraught with issues. The top section of Forestdale Drive is unsafe for further development, with heavily bermed rubble, and slag. Forestdale Drive lacks sidewalks and was not designed to be a nieghborhood through-way attached to a divided highway and a new development of at least 455 Semi-detached homes. Forestdale Drive’s top should only be developed into a cul de sac to ensure the safety of children and families that play, and walk along its narrow roadways.

2a. We do not think the proposed plans in three phases connecting to the Maley Drive extension, has been thoroughly considered as one project. There are many implications and concerns that are directly affected by the final overall design. Liveability within the new development, and maintenance of the well-being of the existing community, is one.

2b. This plan should take into consideration the meandering of Montrose that Council has directed staff to implement.

3. The deletion of the ecological greenspace and the proposed subdivision is designed in a manner that exposes the existing community to the south of the subdivision with a significant increase in sound and particulate pollution from new developments and the Maley Drive Extension. Maley Drive will become a much more disruptive element with any further deletion of the existing ecological buffer.

4. The Subdivision as planned and as a further phase of the Villages of Montrose development, does not live up to the prospectus for it’s sale and promise to the public. As stated on its homepage at http://dalron.com/new-sudbury-minnow-lake/villages-of-montrose, upon which the header and tagline “Come Home to Nature” expresses and further states “The Villages of Montrose, Dalron’s newest community featuring stunning single family homes, nestled in the heart of this highly desirable New Sudbury neighborhood. Immerse yourself in nature while having all the conveniences of being in the heart of the city.”

4a. Take note of the connotative notion of ‘coming home to nature’ and ‘ immerse yourself in nature’ as an implicit promise to the buyers of these lots and properties, that they will have integrated access to the nature that is there now. If by nature, it is meant, the natural forest ecology of the area upon which this subdivision is being built over-top, then the proposed plans leaves none of that, and that already stewarded, and implicitly granted Nickeldale Forest Walking Trail access, would be gone.

4b. The residents of the existing Villages of Montrose properties, were promised by the representatives of Dalron Construction that there would be access and preservation of a lot for the access to this ecological corridor and walking trail. It was already being presented as an asset to the new community, just as it has been a valuable community trail that connects Montrose Ave. to Magnolia Blvd. for decades. Promises were made to preserve this trail.

5. The health and well-being of the existing community would be detrimentally impacted by the removal of this as a connector trail between Montrose Ave. to the extension of the New Sudbury Historical Trail that connects up to Magnolia Blvd. because it takes away a vital passageway in the walking circuit that loops around the neighborhood.

6. The environmental implications of removing this walking trail and ecological corridor has not been properly studied, and no current environmental impact statements or reporting has be made on the site. Without such studies, we can not know what further negative impacts the proposed development will have on the ecology of the site, and the ecology of the surrounding areas.

6.a There is potentially a spring that is located in the vicinity, and that has also not yet been properly assessed
and reported on.

What we are asking for with this petition is a re-draft of the current plan.

We are asking for the 5% parkland allocation to be re-allocated and integrated into the southern most area of the site, as, we do *not* agree with the northern Block 93 allocation (near the high power hydro lines) on the Dalron / Tulloch subdivision plan of Sept 1. 2021.

We are asking for the preservation of the community walking path named the Nickeldale Forest Walking Trail and it’s ecological buffer and corridor with a re-draft of the proposed subdivision.

We have several significant objections and reservations, and therefore object to the current plan’s approval without the developer and City Planning properly addressing all of the above stated concerns.

We as a community stand together on this matter, and as the undersigned, we further acknowledge that this is a personal objection to the subdivision plans, as currently put forth in the re-draft dated Sept 1, 2021, as it negatively impacts our health and well-being, and has deleterious effects on the existing neighborhoods that surround it, and unstudied environmental impacts on the natural ecosystem that is embedded in that site.