The City has extended the deadline for formal comment until Wednesday, August 21.
Public comments on the draft plan, which can be viewed through the City’s community engagement hub at connectptbo.ca/Bonnerworth-Park, can be submitted using the comments tool on the project page at connectptbo.ca/Bonnerworth-Park, by sending an email
to [email protected] or by calling 705-742-0050 ext. 2226#. Public comments can be submitted for consideration ahead of finalizing the project plan.
YOUR INPUT IS IMPORTANT!
The following list of topics related to the plan, the City’s process, and the background studies it
posted on its website can help you to pose questions, comments, or suggestions to the City in
areas that interest/concern you. These topics are listed in no particular order.
We know most people reading this remain opposed to the updated plan, which has not addressed community concerns. We urge you to express your continued opposition to the redevelopment of the park in any comments you submit to the City. The material below will hopefully help you to buttress your arguments.
IF YOU CARE ABOUT THIS PARK, PLEASE LET THE CITY KNOW WHAT YOU THINK!
The Human Question
The City argues the redeveloped park will benefit a broad spectrum of the community and
improve their health and well-being. Not so.
Improving the lives of a small segment of Peterborough’s citizenry comes at the cost to many
in the City’s sports and school communities, informal park users, and nearby residents.
Some 8,000 people have expressed their opposition to this proposal.
The bias, unfairness, and disdain the City has shown to those opposing the plan has only been
matched by its unbridled favouritism toward the “winners” in the process and resulting plan.
The City’s process has generated months of anxiety, anger, and frustration for many, many
people, people that see a city administration clearly bent on serving a small minority of vocal
and influential people over the greater public good.
This angst and impact will continue for decades to come if this plan goes ahead as currently
constituted.
Through this process, the City has created long-term damage to any sense of trust and belief
in truthfulness we hold for our city administration, one that is supposed to serve—not
punish—its citizens.
What’s with this Tourism Rationale?
The mayor and several councilors continue to tout economic spinoffs from tournaments the
new pickleball facility will generate.
Their comments are based on supposition and speculation—they have produced not a shred
of evidence—business case, financial plan, economic analysis—to back up the claim.
The facility would host how many tournaments over a period of, say 3 months?
A robust economic development strategy builds a great community in which to live, work,
play, and learn. The tourists then follow. Let’s focus on the economic basics.
What are the Public Safety implications of the plan?
The extensive amount of berming, tree planting, and noise shielding of pickleball courts will
render the interior of the park—and park users—invisible from the street.
These features will leave people using or crossing the park—particularly at night—
vulnerable from a safety point of view.
Where is the safety audit of the plan? If there is one, the City should produce it.
Why is there no lighting plan?
There is no information regarding a lighting strategy, where lights will be located, what will
be lit, how light spillage outside of the park will be prevented.
The City must articulate how it intends to manage light timing.
Its track record of not responding to all complaints from nearby residents of tennis court
lights being on past midnight, suggests the City won’t effectively manage pickleball court
and other park lighting.
Proposed open lawn area not a substitute
The proposed open lawn area is small—it does not replace the space needed for high school
athletic programs lost to the park redevelopment, as Mayor Jeff Leal suggested in a recent
Peterborough Examiner article.
The space itself is vulnerable to the aspirations of the Peterborough Pickleball Association,
whose representatives during the August 13 joint meeting of the Arenas, Parks, and
Recreation Committee and the Accessibility Advisory Committee stated their desire that the
space accommodate additional pickleball courts—as many as 20—for national tournaments.
The City should state clearly its long-term intentions for this space.
What is the City’s strategy to replace the athletic programmes St. Pete’s high school students
are losing because of the park redevelopment?’
Noise is more than numbers
Currently, the City has no viable system to log residents’ complaints regarding pickleball
noise at Bonnerworth Park, and so no understanding of the volume and nature of complaints
that residents have made. Yet the noise study uses City information as a baseline, as
referenced on Pg13 of the noise study: “Based on feedback from the City of Peterborough
Staff it is understood that there have not been significant noise complaints to the
existing/current operations”.
The City has made no attempt to provide sound mitigation at the six existing pickleball
courts (or during tournaments when court numbers double).
The noise study provides much technical detail on how noise will increase or not, but does
not address the character of the noise and its effects/impacts on residents who the study
concludes will be exposed to “noticeable” effects from long-term duration—as much as 16
hours per day—pickleball noise.
The noise study recommends the City consider softer paddles and reduced hours from the 7
a.m.-11 p.m. window currently available, yet in the current consultation the City has
provided NO information on whether it would institute these recommendations or not.
The City should meet with residents whose houses have been assessed in the study.
Risk of Phase 2 not happening
Given the prospects of a 10 percent tax increase in 2025 and the painful cuts a 5 percent
increase that Council has directed staff to explore, it is clear that this park is not—and cannot
be—a budget priority for 2025.
Who will lose out? The skateboarders and bike pump track users that have been asking for
these facilities for years.
But the Peterborough Pickleball Association will get everything it wants.
How fair is that?
The project should be stopped NOW so that all park users have an equal opportunity to argue
their case and for Council to treat them equally.
Unusable Open Space
The 275 trees and berms (along Monaghan and McDonnel) the City proposes for the park
cover the vast majority of the 63 percent of the park the City says will be open space.
This space will be unusable for any of the recreational activities—formal and informal—the
park now supports.
So, anyone can look at the lushly planted, bermed park landscape, but can’t use it.
Where is the Stormwater Study?
Why is the stormwater study not available?
Increasingly frequent and more intense rainfall (e.g., a recurrence of the 2004 Peterborough
Flood), the continued seepage of groundwater into the Hunt Terraces parking lot, and the
future development of the Mount, all have led to local concerns over the effects of the
hardening of areas of the park on flooding.
To show the public an “enhanced vegetated swale” on the revised Concept Plan is not
enough.
Why is tournament traffic not assessed in the Traffic and Parking Study?
As the August 15 discussion at the APRAC meeting confirmed, the primary justification for
the large size of the facility is tournament play.
Yet the traffic study is silent on this subject, other than a perfunctory statement indicating it
to be a consideration when planning tournaments
This is inadequate.
The traffic study contains no assessment of participant numbers (up to 500 we are told, not
including families and spectators), traffic generated, parking demand, and how it might be
accommodated or reduced (e.g., off-site parking; transit shuttle, etc.).
The Mount site that provided a convenient overflow for the recent Mayhew tournament will
not be available in future as the site will be developed.
Nor does the study account for future traffic growth on roads near the park from development
in Lily Lake and the nearby Mount.
What are the effects of tournament traffic on these roads in 10, 20 years or more, for a
pickleball facility that presumably will last decades?
Where is Transit?
Transit is completely absent from the traffic study recommendations.
The traffic study makes no effort to encourage transit use (unsurprisingly, the study omits
any mention of the 1-hour bus headways during the day).
In spite of the rationale the City uses that this site is easily accessible by transit, its traffic
experts have concluded transit (which generally serves marginalized communities more than
others) will play no role in providing access to the park.
Nor does the traffic consultant suggest how transit could ease the traffic and parking burden
generated by up-to 500-participant tournaments (not to mention their families and
spectators).
Traffic on Bonaccord Street
The traffic study states there is no need for traffic calming on Bonaccord.
But it does so citing past City analysis that assessed the street east—not west—of the Trans-
Canada Trail crossing, where the new facility will have an impact.
The study does not account for the high traffic speeds of vehicles descending the
Bonnerworth hill where they then pass children and young families at the Hamilton Park
splash pad and the many seniors that live at Hunt Terraces.
Traffic already uses Bonaccord Street as a through route to Park Street; the difficulty of
turning left onto an increasingly busy Monaghan Rd will encourage yet more drivers using
the new parking lot to head east down along Bonaccord St past all these vulnerable street
users.
The additional traffic generated by the new parking lot on Bonaccord will render it more
difficult for traffic turning to and from Middleton Drive. Because of the offset intersection
with Bonaccord (and driver confusion over the unmarked but apparent left turn lanes on
Monaghan), the already-awkward turning movements will be rendered even more difficult to
execute.
The waste and inequity of unused pickleball court space
Given the fact the primary driver behind the large number of pickleball courts is tournament
play, surely some of the pickleball courts will be empty when no tournaments are held, i.e.,
the vast majority of the time.
Why can’t the courts be configured in such a way to accommodate tennis? Nets and
stanchions could be easily provided so that tennis players don’t need to get in their cars and
drive more than 3 kilometres to Knights of Columbus Park.
Doing so would provide for wider community use of the redeveloped park without any
impact on the use and supply of pickleball courts.
Given the need to spend public funds wisely, retaining some of the multi-use character of
racquet sport courts at Bonnerworth is not only fair to the community currently using the
park, but demonstrates a responsible use of scarce City funds.
Where are the replacement ball diamonds the City promises?
The City has stated on numerous occasions—including its May 31 statement—that baseball
diamonds in other locations will be upgraded. There is no information on when—of if in fact
it will—do so, particularly given the budget crunch the City faces and major crises in
housing, homelessness, and addiction.
If it is happening, why is there no information? The City must commit to undertaking these
refits before next season so that children and women baseball league players are not left out
in the cold.
