Protect our waterfront

The football is filling up

In the narrow wedge between Lakeshore Road and Old Lakeshore Road — the piece of land people here call the football — Council and the Ontario Land Tribunal have now approved four towers:

That's roughly 720 new residential units on one narrow strip of waterfront. And a further application at 1393 Graham's Lane proposes three more buildings of 16, 9 and 20 storeys — 722 units on its own.

Where the Province actually pointed

Here's the part that doesn't get said enough. In June 2021 the Province moved Burlington's Urban Growth Centre out of downtown and to the Burlington GO station lands, and removed the downtown Major Transit Station Area designation entirely. It found the downtown John Street bus terminal did not constitute a mobility hub.

So we are concentrating growth in the place the Province told us not to, and underusing the place it told us to — where the transit, the road capacity and the servicing already exist.

About the Land Tribunal

You'll hear that the Ontario Land Tribunal simply overrules Burlington whenever Council refuses something. That isn't quite right, and the truth is more useful.

The OLT approved the 27-storey Core development on Old Lakeshore in 2022, and that decision changed the calculus downtown. Since then Council has approved 23-, 25- and 27-storey towers on the same strip — with members openly citing OLT precedent as the reason. As Councillor Rory Nisan put it: "Unfortunately, through OLT decisions primarily, it has become clear that the reality on the ground is not what I would like it to be."

Which brings me to the thing almost nobody is talking about. Downtown is still zoned under the old rules →

What I will push for

• Direct high-density growth to the GO station lands That's where the infrastructure is. That's where the Province pointed. That's where a tower does the least harm and the most good.
• Finish the downtown zoning, with binding caps Defined height and setback numbers, defined before an application arrives — not flexible guidelines interpreted afterward.
• No approval without a completed traffic impact assessment for Ward 2 Every tower downtown means more cars on Lakeshore and Brant. We should know how many before we vote, not afterwards.
• Community benefit that is actually banked When density is granted, the public benefit negotiated in exchange should be specific, enforceable and delivered — not a letter of intent that evaporates three ownership changes later. This is contract drafting. It's what I do.

Honestly

I cannot stop every tower. Neither can any other candidate, and you should be sceptical of one who says otherwise. What a councillor can do is make sure the city walks into every negotiation and every hearing with a current framework, a real traffic study, and a lawyer's eye on the agreement.

Sources: City of Burlington current development project pages; Ontario Land Tribunal decisions; City of Burlington news releases, June 2021 and October 2024; BurlingtonToday council coverage 2025–2026.