The women opposed to a new concert site on Grafton Street in Charlottetown pleaded their case at an Island Regulatory and Appeals Commission hearing Wednesday.
Joan Cumming and Andrea Battison appeared before the commission after they appealed a decision by the city to allow the Charlottetown Area Development Corporation (CADC) to move forward with a plan to turn parcels of land on the north and south sides of Grafton Street near the Hillsborough Bridge into an outdoor events site for up to 25,000 people and a parking lot for 121 cars and six buses.
Cumming was the first to take the stand and told commissioners the development would saturate the area with entertainment venues.
She said they had appealed the decision because there were unresolved issues.
“We challenge it on the belief the process was flawed,” she said.
As part of their presentation, the women used slides to show some of their concerns about the development, including one that showed residential streets with well-maintained properties, another showing
the overgrown site for the proposed development and a third showing an
overhead view of the area with blacked-out sections to point out all the asphalt
and lack of green space around the potential concert site.
The women filed the appeal based on what they said were concerns about a public meeting on the proposal, a lack of clarity about several issues including environmental concerns and a lack of information about studies done to look at other possible sites.
Cumming told the commission the city’s public meeting discussed several issues besides the proposed development, there wasn’t enough room for everyone who attended and people who had to wait in the hall couldn’t hear because a sound system wasn’t used at the meeting.
“This meeting fell far short of even the basic needs,” she said.
During his cross-examination, city solicitor David Hooley said the project was discussed for almost an hour and a half during the meeting and if anyone had something to say they would have realized the opportunity was there, even if they couldn’t hear everything that was said.
“If a person wanted to be heard, they would have been heard.”
He added a transcript of the meeting showed Mayor Clifford Lee adjourned the meeting because there weren’t any more people who wanted to speak and said the city hadn’t received any comments from people who complained because they weren’t able to voice their concerns.
“No one has come forward and said that.”
When commission chair Allan Rankin asked Battison if the women would have appealed the decision if the city had held a proper public forum, she replied that if everything had been done properly with plans that showed the development was the right way to go, she wouldn’t have appealed.
“I don’t believe so,” she said.
The commission also heard from Radya Rifaat, who was involved in a traffic study for the proposed development.
She said her company, Hatch Mott MacDonald, was asked to look at 25,000 cars maximum for any events, but with the number of people who used public transit for the Jack Frost Children’s Festival, people who live within walking
distance to the site and people who carpool, the
total would be about 5,000 cars in the area during an event.
“It’s not going to be 25,000 vehicles spilling into this area.”
The appeal hearing was adjourned at the end of the day and will resume Sept. 20 at 9:30 a.m. to hear testimony from the city and the CADC.
