Faced with a veritable wall of opposition, city council ultimately sided with neighbours who didn't want to see a former golf course turned into an RV dealership.
On Monday night, city council voted 8-1 against a zoning and official community plan change that would turn a portion of Yellowhead Grove golf course into a new Woody's RV World location. Coun. Garth Frizzell cast the lone vote in favour of the application.
The vote came after a two-and-a-half-hour public hearing, in which a cavalcade of residents voiced their opposition to the plan, citing concerns ranging from increased traffic levels, to noise and light pollution, to potential loss of property values.
The nearly five-hectare site proposal included a building, parking for RV sales and customers and a storm drainage pond. The Alberta-based franchise had also agreed to register a covenant on the property limiting it to RV sales and service and to restrict the building size to address any concerns about water flow requirements.
But regardless of city council's decision – and some neighbours' desire for the land to stay as a recreational use – the property will not remain a golf course.
"What really put the death knell in this being used a golf course was the expansion that's coming of the highway right-of-way which is going to take quite a bit of property along the highway and it's going to make too much loss of land to make it sustainable for a golf course," said Dan Adamson, project development director for Radloff and Associates. "The land use change is inevitable here."
