AWARD-WINNING FARMER Paul Ekstein has been in Vaughan since 1979. He's seen many changes to the once-rural landscape and thinks he'll see plenty more.
When Paul Ekstein decided to sell off one of his Vaughan farms to a developer in 2004, he got what he considered to be a good deal on the sale.
“One of my farms was at Major Mackenzie and Huntington Road. There was nothing there at all and I got what I consider good money,” said Ekstein, 76, an award-winning cow farmer who first set up shop in Vaughan in 1979.
Using the cash from the land, he purchased a new farm and agricultural equipment to strengthen his business. The developer, in turn, got acres in the yet-to-be-developed area to build a community with hundreds of new homes.
But if Ekstein looks around the property at one of his remaining farms at Highway 50 and Rutherford Road today, the view is far from barren. With a new Sobeys distribution centre across the street on Huntington Road and a bustling intersection at the northwest corner of his property, Ekstein is now surrounded by a growing city.
It’s a common scenario for Vaughan, where thousands of acres of farmland have turned into suburban communities over the last few decades. But depending on one’s perspective, it’s either the natural progression of events in a city that’s long catered to would-be suburbanites or a nightmare scenario wherein green spaces are slowly annihilated in order to make room for an unsustainable pattern of sprawl development.
At least, that seems to be the choice in perspectives emerging from a debate about urban boundaries in the city’s draft official plan, the document that will guide Vaughan’s development over the next 20 years.
Charged with meeting provincially mandated targets for population densification, the city has included an option in the plan to expand development into the so-called ‘white belt.’ Made up of rural lands, the white belt serves as a kind of buffer between the urban boundary and protected greenbelt lands. The white belt lands can only be developed if the city deems it necessary to expand the urban boundary. The question of whether such an expansion is in fact necessary is now at the heart of a debate between the city and a new group calling itself Sustainable Vaughan.
“We felt we were denied the opportunity to have the discussion about where we should put new housing,” said Woodbridge resident Sony Rai, the group’s founder.
Angered by what he sees as the city’s attempt to push through the expansion of the urban boundary without consulting residents, Rai started Sustainable Vaughan in May and has since held several town-hall style meetings where residents were invited to learn about what the expansion might mean.
“There’s so much out there that tells us this is a silly thing to do,” said Deb Schulte, a supporter of Rai’s group and a candidate for city council. “Everybody complains about the traffic and we know that by sprawling further north, that isn’t going to get any better.”
The group cites air and water pollution, in addition to the loss of rich farmlands as further reasons to avoid urban expansion into white belt lands. Moreover, they say the reasoning behind the expansion is flawed and that the city can meet densification targets within the existing urban boundary.
“The thing I find so offensive is that it’s not even necessary,” Schulte said. “The densification numbers in (the province’s) ‘Where and How to Grow’ are very conservative estimates… We have the developers saying ‘We want to do more than what you’re saying.’ And they’re not going to say that if they don’t think they can sell it.”
However, the city maintains that it’s not so optimistic about meeting the targets set out by the province.
“Consultants have said it doesn’t look like it can all be accommodated (with high rises),” said Ward 2 councillor Tony Carella. “The urban boundary needs to be expanded by 3 percent to accommodate the last 15 percent of the growth target.”
Although he defended the expansion into the white belt as necessary, Carella acknowledged the city has been used to a pattern of growth that is unsustainable.
“When I moved here 28 years ago, people were only interested in single-family dwellings; They have been the purchase of choice,” he said. “Over the last 30 years, anybody who bought a house here has to admit they’ve contributed to sprawl.”
Rather than focusing on incursions into the white belt lands, Carella said, people should direct their energies towards improving the efficiency of the existing city by way of public transit.
“Whoever is concerned about the 3 percent expansion … should take a look around and realize the real effort is going to be building sustainability into the urban area we’ve created over the last 30 years. How to get people out of their cars and taking transit — that’s the issue. We built all this on cheap oil. The 3 percent is important, but not as important as the lifestyle.”
But with city council set to vote on the new official plan Sept. 7, shortly before the municipal election, it may be up to voters to decide where attention should be paid.
“We want to make sprawl an election issue. It’s an election year and we want people to learn about what sprawl means and to let their councillors know they don’t want it,” said Rai.
As for Ekstein, he’s not going anywhere in a hurry. Although he’s had players like Wal-Mart offer to buy his farm, he’s content for now carrying on his business on one of the last tufts of Vaughan’s receding farmland.
“We’ve invested a lot of money in the buildings and at my age I don’t want to move,” said Ekstein. “I’ve kept it because I love it and I want to keep it.”
