Criticisms about the Parliament Oak hotel development won’t go away.
The latest are aimed at engineering reports town staff used to have council approve a zoning amendment in June that paved the way to start construction on the proposed four-storey luxury hotel on King Street.
Prepared by the engineering firm R.V. Anderson Associates Ltd. and paid for by the developer, Two Sister Resorts Corp., both the site servicing and stormwater management report and a traffic impact study open with statements relieving itself of liability.
“Any use which a third party makes of this report, or any reliance on or decisions to be made based on it, are the responsibility of such third parties,” states both reports.
“R.V. Anderson Associates Limited accepts no responsibility for damages, if any, suffered by any third party as a result of decisions made or actions based on this report.”
A pair of engineering experts living in NOTL believe this reduces both reports’ worthiness.
“When the town staff say, ‘We read the report and we’re satisfied with it,’ then the R.V. Anderson people say, ‘Thank you, now it’s your problem,’” said Ron Simkus, a retired mining engineer with 40 years in the field.
“You would expect that (town staff) would challenge the developers.”
Kirsten McCauley, the town’s director of community and development services, said she and town staff reviewed the R.V. Anderson reports before bringing their recommendation to council and had no issues with the transfer of liability.
“I don’t have any concern about the disclaimer,” she said.
“In this case, we worked with our operations staff, and they reviewed the information and they provided their feedback and the recommendation back to us.”
Beyond this disclaimer, Simkus and Richard Connelly, a retired civil and municipal engineer who is still a registered engineer in Ontario, found what they say are several issues with the reports.
This includes a lack of information on the state of receiving infrastructure for sanitary sewers, no information on the reserve capacity of the sewage treatment system, no allowances for climate change and runoff/drainage capabilities after intense rainfalls and no mention of a storm management facility to match pre and post-development rain flows.
This, the engineers claim, is a recipe for a flooding disaster in a community already suffering from aging infrastructure and documented surface and groundwater issues.
While Simkus is no longer a registered engineer, his knowledge about the damage water can do is documented by his years of experience.
“As a person in mining, rock isn’t your biggest issue — water is,” he noted.
On the parking and traffic side of things, the pair are equally dismayed.
Connelly said the report’s estimated parking spaces of 248 is much lower than a five-star hotel would need and still way too much for what the property and neighbourhood can handle.
He adds that with 129 hotel rooms as planned, an estimated 300-plus employees coming in from all points of the region for work and with the hotel’s proposed convention facilities bringing in even more vehicles, the result will be a traffic nightmare.
“You start looking at traffic impact, but then you start looking at that parking impact, and it’s impossible. It won’t fit,” said Connelly.
The process by which these reports are reviewed by operations staff does not include a professional engineer who works for the municipality.
“The Town of Niagara-on-the-Lake does not employ an in-house professional engineer,” said communication co-ordinator Marah Minor in a written response.
“The town, like many other small municipalities, uses outside engineering firms when required,” she added.
The requirement to seek a third-party engineering report will come later in the site plan approval process, said McCauley.
“That will either be the one that we typically use, which is Associated Engineering, or another engineering firm that is selected by the town,” she said.
A similar peer review process is followed by the cities of Toronto and Hamilton.
Simkus hopes the plan is to go with a firm that has no past contracts with the town.
“(Any firm contracted to review the reports) has to be totally independent of both current contracts of the town and with the developer and would provide an absolutely independent assessment of the project itself,” he said.
Relying on the R.V. Anderson reports has created a liability shift that Connelly doesn’t think council fully understands or is even aware of.
“If they don’t get their act together and bring in a group of professional engineers that can do a proper report with their interests, they’re going to be in deep shit.”
Lord Mayor Gary Zalepa doesn’t put much weight on the opinions of Connelly and Simkus.
“I’m not interested in that,” he said.
“We will get the questions answered, but we’ll be dealing with actively employed, qualified engineers that will be responsible for the municipality.”
Zalepa added he had not seen the reports.
Coun. Sandra O’Connor has seen the reports and is very concerned about their contents.
She voted against the zoning amendment in June.
She has now gone as far as to request that town staff bring the site plan to council for review prior to its approval.
This is something that is no longer normal practice.
With the passing of the province’s Bill 109 More Homes for Everyone Act in April 2022, site plans can now be delegated to municipal staff for approval before they reach council.
O’Connor, however, has made a special request to have the site plan reviewed by council before staff approval due to concerns she has and those of members of the public such as expressed by Simkus and Connelly.
“This is the first one we have done it for because it is so important,” she said.
“In most cases, it’s not a concern, but in some cases, particularly if it’s a major development, we would like to see those details.”
For Simkus and Connelly, the pair say they are speaking out because of their love for the community and a commitment to upholding the values of the engineering profession.
“Engineers have an oath that they take when you get these iron rings,” said Simkus, lifting his hand to show the simple metal band given to all engineers upon university graduation.
“And that oath is to not just stand back and watch this parade go by,” he added.
“If you feel compulsion to say something, you have an obligation that we took when we graduated from school.”
