Charlottetown City Council trying to sneak re-zoning through again

Update: Everyone should watch Compass on CBC tonight (Monday) at 6 for an apparently very informative report on the City planning dept. I made a few edits to this post for clarity.

Well, it looks like those geniuses at Charlottetown City Hall are at it again. A couple of years ago someone hatched a plan to connect two old houses near the West end of Grafton St. and turn them into a bar. This was a boneheaded idea for any number of reasons, not the least of which was that it's on the other side of the downtown core to all the other bars in town, is next to absolutely nothing, and wouldn't be a very good building to start with for that kind of thing.

Thankfully a few city residents got wind of the plan last time and roundly embarrassed the city council in public meetings about it, and the idea was dropped. Out of that also came an understanding that there should be no more commercial development west of Pownal St.

The city are at it again, now. They want to re-zone a few blocks South of Euston St. to Downtown Multi-Use, which could be anything from bars to gas stations, and are doing it under the auspices of the 'Density Project'.

What this will do will be to poison the city's own stated goal of assuring the high quality of life in the downtown area and attract more residents by assuring a safe environment. The absolute worst thing for the residents, let alone the Bed & Breakfast owners in this part of town would be to have bars and gas stations and lord-knows-what else popping up in the middle of neighbourhoods.

In their report The Downtown Density Project (pdf) they say:

Our objective is to continue to reinforce the Downtown Core Area as an
attractive, enjoyable and safe place for residents and visitors.

Now I'm thinking that it's only a very small subset of potential downtown developers and residents that would just love to have crowds of rowdy bargoers under their windows every weekend at 3am. The city's attempt to bend to the desires of one business person will poison their stated goal of improving the desirability of the downtown area.

Thankfully the right people have caught wind of this and the City is in for yet another black eye. Should be fun to watch.
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