PCs approve development of two downtown Brampton sites in floodplain prior to mitigation work Patrick Brown has failed to fund

Brampton’s downtown has slowly deteriorated for decades. Its location in a major floodplain forced the provincial government to declare the precinct a Special Policy Area, a designation that severely restricts any future development due to the risk of flooding.

Twenty years ago, former councillor John Sanderson worked tirelessly with the Liberal provincial government of the day to address the construction bottleneck that has caused the city centre to wither. A bold initiative called Riverwalk was eventually developed, to widen the Etobicoke Creek flood channel that runs through Brampton’s downtown core. The project would open up kilometres of green space to the public, create a boardwalk corridor along the new canal and a range of recreational features. Meanwhile, the expanded channel would mitigate the risk of flooding in the area and open up downtown to finally be revitalized by major construction investments.   
 

Top: Flooding in downtown Brampton has been a problem for decades, due its proximity to Etobicoke Creek and the topography of the area (PAMA Archives); Bottom, the Riverwalk Project to expand the Etobicoke Creek flood channel has been delayed due to Patrick Brown’s failure to fund the project since he was elected in 2018 (City of Brampton).

The project was moving forward under the leadership of former mayor Linda Jeffrey, with early engineering studies underway and the City of Brampton applied for federal funding assistance. Ottawa then committed almost $40 million to the Riverwalk project.

In 2018, Jeffrey was defeated by Patrick Brown, who immediately began cutting hundreds of millions of dollars out of the capital budget, as taxes continued to go up due to his lavish spending on senior municipal staff, a wave of employees who were pushed out and had to be paid handsome severances and widespread mismanagement under the leadership of the controversial politician. 

Brown axed the Downtown Reimagined project approved under Jeffrey and promised his own version, which has never materialized. 

The Riverwalk plan went unfunded under Brown and has barely moved forward, with fears that the federal funding could be lost because of his failure to allocate the City’s share. Now, estimates for the entire project including the widening of the Etobicoke Creek floodway, the moving of bridges, new recreational features and the impressive boardwalk, have been conservatively estimated at more than $400 million according to sources The Pointer has spoken with.

The City does not have this money. Its transit system is struggling, services have been cut, major infrastructure projects have been delayed and almost every big promise Brown made has been broken: his world class cricket stadium isn’t even mentioned anymore; the underground LRT he claimed would be funded by senior levels of government isn’t on anyone’s radar; his Brampton University plan ended in an investigation into his mismanagement of funds (Brown cancelled the probe); the “Innovation District” he claims is moving forward, has become a local joke; and numerous other projects have been postponed or cancelled.

The Riverwalk, meanwhile, has languished, and superficial work that enraged local residents when dozens of mature trees were clearcut, is the only sign of any activity. 

Realizing the impacts Brown’s failed leadership was having across the entire city centre, the City of Brampton moved to have the provincial government accommodate two projects that cannot go forward with the Special Policy Area (SPA) restrictions in place.     

The Doug Ford PC government recently approved accommodations for the development of two downtown Brampton sites—the Centre of Innovation and Heritage Theatre projects—for which the city had submitted a proposal to be reviewed to amend the SPA framework regarding the area’s designation.

"The proposed official plan amendment has been reviewed by provincial staff and has been determined to have addressed policy 5.2.5(a) of the PPS as well as requirements in the provincial Procedures for Approval of New Special Policy Areas and Modifications to Existing SPAs under the Provincial Policy Statement dated January 2009," Rob Flack, Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing, wrote in a letter to the City of Brampton at the end of April.

"Accordingly, I wish to inform you that pursuant to PPS policy 5.2.5(a), both the Minister of Natural Resources and I, as Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing, approve the official plan amendment in Attachment 1 to this letter for the two sites in the Downtown Brampton SPA."

The city sought ministerial approval to allow the construction of these two sites, despite the lack of floodplain mitigation infrastructure which the Riverwalk project was designed to create.

The Etobicoke Creek floodway needs to be expanded to protect the downtown area from the severe storms that occur more often due to climate change.

(The Pointer files)

The provincial SPA restriction—which applies to much of the downtown—prevents many forms of development, including residential, due to the high risk of flooding and the city’s long-term failure to upgrade the stormwater infrastructure.

Following the provincial approval, the City of Brampton can now move forward with development proposals and construction ahead of the completion of the Riverwalk flood mitigation project, though occupancy of the buildings will remain restricted until the flood protection is in place. 

The proposal came before city council in December at a planning and development committee meeting when Brampton council members, including Brown, approved the rezoning process without any council discussion, for two parcels of land on George Street North and Nelson Street West for the Centre of Innovation and 18 parcels on Main Street North for the Heritage Theatre Block and Southern Block. 

For more than 70 years, the city has been managing the risk of water rising above Etobicoke Creek’s banks by rerouting it around downtown through a concrete-lined bypass channel that has protected the area from flooding. Due to the continued threat, and storm water data that shows the existing bypass channel can not hold enough water to withstand flood risks caused by much more intense storms that are occurring more frequently, the provincial SPA designation has restricted the ability to redevelop Brampton’s decaying city centre.

According to the City, the bypass channel does not do enough to prevent the area from being vulnerable to flooding under current or forecasted conditions.

The only solution, the Riverwalk project to reconstruct the Etobicoke Creek floodway (which would protect the downtown and lift the most restrictive conditions under the SPA) has been badly mismanaged under Brown’s leadership. The Pointer has sent questions to him for years, asking how his cuts to the capital budget would impact the Riverwalk project, which is the key to unlocking major investments in the downtown core. Brown has refused to answer the questions or address how he plans to pay for all of the promised work he has removed from the City budget.

The Riverwalk project was supposed to have been completed before the end of Brown’s first term in 2022. No major work has begun to this day. And the only visible sign of any recent progress was the clearcutting of trees that local residents were not even informed about.

The Pointer has repeatedly asked Brown why no information about the Riverwalk plan has come up for discussion in City council meetings with full public participation and why agendas are devoid of any updates or details about what is supposed to be one of the most transformative initiatives in Brampton’s history. He has refused to answer questions.

The clearcutting of trees along the flood channel happened earlier this year. 

(Alexis Wright/The Pointer)

“I have a beautiful view of the creek, and I walk that pathway a lot. I love it, especially in the summer, because I would be able to sit down under a big, beautiful tree and just appreciate life and the environment,” Rhonda Collis, who lives near the bypass channel, told The Pointer in April.  

After seeing early Riverwalk plans that appeared to preserve “numerous mature trees amongst the renovation”, Collis believed the City would work around the trees while solving the flooding problem.

“Well, this is really good,” she thought. “The City is going to enhance the floodplain and they’re going to leave these beautiful trees. And as someone who is often a critic of the City, I think they’re getting this right.” 

But when work finally began years after the project was supposed to start, she looked out her window this past spring and felt “physically ill” as she watched beautiful old trees being chopped down.

“It felt like we were walking through an apocalypse,” she said, “panic-stricken” as she walked through the aftermath with a friend.

“This may improve flood control, but don't trees improve flood control, and don't we need the grass and the trees? And what happened to that poster that the City promised us we were going to have mature trees?”
 

The Riverwalk plan as depicted in the three renderings above did not show trees being clearcut. The Etobicoke Creek flood bypass redevelopment was supposed to have been completed four years ago; now the only sign of work is the clearcutting of many of the trees in the photograph at the bottom.

(City of Brampton; The Pointer files)

If the Riverwalk project gets fully completed, an area of approximately 19 hectares will be removed from the floodplain designation, which will finally allow other parts of Brampton's aging Four Corners area to be redeveloped.

After four years of delaying the project, the Riverwalk Urban Design Master Plan, billed as a renewed approach, was presented to a committee of council in the summer of 2022, with a new project timeline. But Brown once again failed to keep the plan on schedule.

It was supposed to be a guiding document and a framework for future design and capital investment initiatives, as well as smaller projects in specific local areas.

City staff began working on land acquisition for the project three years ago, but very little information has since been provided by Brown or senior staff under his leadership. After repeated delays since Brown was first elected in 2018, construction was finally supposed to begin last year, but that did not happen.

Brown, immediately after being elected in 2018, cancelled the Downtown Revitalization plan and then pushed forward budget cuts to make up for his lavish spending on salaries, council and staff travel around the world, perks like car allowances, millions of dollars for consultants and questionable contracts, and tens of millions that had to be paid out to all the staff he pushed out the door (Brown cancelled a half-dozen investigations ordered by a majority group of councillors last term into spending under his leadership). Despite the city’s financial strategy outlining the need for spending on critical projects and initiatives including the Riverwalk, he ignored that advice.

And despite the federal funding assistance for the project (which could cost more than half a billion dollars) Brown has failed to provide matching dollars to unlock the $38 million Ottawa offered five years ago, and has ignored a range of spending priorities to rehabilitate Brampton’s struggling downtown.

The long-delayed Riverwalk project was supposed to have fixed Brampton’s downtown flood-risk problem by now, and spur major development in the city centre. That has not happened.

(City of Brampton)

After almost a decade of delays since Brown became mayor, construction of the flood mitigation project is now scheduled for completion in 2028. Major work still has not begun.

The PC government has now approved two development projects inside the floodplain, despite no sign the flood mitigation project will be completed any time soon. It’s unclear how any new construction will be protected from the risks caused by Etobicoke Creek and other underlying conditions in the area, as more frequent severe storms pose a greater threat.

-With files from Anushka Yadav

Email: [email protected]

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