The date of November 6, 2018 has been set by the Local Planning Appeal Tribunal (LPAT) to hear the appeal of opponents of the $100 million Kingsway Entertainment District in Greater Sudbury, Ontario, which includes a Gateway casino and a community arena. Four appeals of the city’s decision have been filed.
The appeal is called a Case Management Conference. It will address the concerns of persons such as Sudbury businessman Tom Fortin, a director of Casino Free Sudbury, and those who say the district should not be located out of the town center and that the public was not consulted about the city’s decision.
Meantime LPAT says it will gather information on the appeal and try to identify ways to mediate. Fortin told CBC News he is optimistic that the casino can be halted: “If [the appeals] … didn’t have a chance or [were] trivial, they would have been dismissed at this stage. They had the opportunity to dismiss them, but they chose to grant validity to all of the appeals.”
Fortin is up front about his goal being not to slow down, but to completely halt the project. He hopes that an upcoming city council election might aid that goal. He also doesn’t see much hope of mediating that position. It’s a zero or one proposition.
“Under the Planning Act, the city has to abide by the official plan, in regards to our growth and development, and follow the provincial policy statements with our growth and development. We feel they’ve moved away from where they should be,” he said.
Dario Zulich, developer of the Kingsway property, said the appeal is not unexpected. He told CBC News: “We knew it was coming, we were just wondering when,” he said. “I’m happy they’ve actually set down a date to actually look into it a little further and I’m looking forward to getting this over with. I’m still confident in our project and what we’ve done to date.”
Meanwhile the project is moving forward, says Zulich. “We are well down the planning process, everything is in order to start, and we’ll get over this little bump in the road and away we go.”
