Almost a week after Bonavista residents received their letters from Landmark Planning, South Royalwood residents have found similar letters in their rural mailboxes. Rural mail delivery works a little different out here. Still, we got the letters.
Registering for one of the two Zoom sessions next Monday is easy. Contact information on how to get a Zoom invitation is found on the letter.
The fact that the in-person open house next Tuesday is in Southdale is revealing in itself. While close to the Qualico headquarters in Sage Creek and to the thousands of Bonavista residents, this is a long and circuitous journey for Creek Bend residents. We will drive past the DSFM high school, the Hindu temple and Morrow Gospel Church as we go north on St. Anne’s Road towards the Southdale rec centre. Still, local residents will finally get their face-to-face meeting with the developers and the planning consultants, no matter what option they chose.
The Creek Bend Residents Association is like an old-time boomer family. Four kids. Urban Creek Bend is the oldest. Construction? Meetings at City Hall? Developers? New roads? Been there. Done that. Will they want to see a new traffic lane installed on Creek Bend to allow for two lanes of active traffic and one for parking? Absolutely.
South Fraipont is the eighteen-year-old about to graduate. Will the two families currently living there sell and leave home, or will they stay and tough it out as construction rips up every square foot of the farm land around their houses? That is their choice.
Sioux Road West is the baby. Development is still many years away. Perhaps to the four families living south of Creek Bend that is so far in the future it is not worth worrying about. I almost hope that is the case for them. Living alongside the gentle Seine River is as peaceful as it gets.
For the ten rural Creek Bend Road families this is their most challenging time in their decades living on the street. Some local resident families have lived on the street for five generations. They may be the last generation of their family live on the street.
It is uncertain what we will learn about rural Creek Bend Road next week. Through its Development Agreement Parameters document the City of Winnipeg has broad powers to direct developers on what they need to do to satisfy City requirements. If they directed Qualico and its silent partners to pave Creek Bend and to install full city services, they would have no choice but to do it.
Many Creek Bend owners/residents might welcome development. They may live on their full 5-acre properties, or their properties may already be for sale. To them this is payday. Their bags may already be packed.
Other residents have smaller, grandfathered properties. Although their lots and septic fields may be big by urban standards, they do not have giant fields ready for the bulldozer. These are their long-time homes. When is actual construction anticipated to start? Will they have to pay for the expensive pipes and concrete installed in front of their wide front yards? Do they have to rip out their septic fields? How will this affect their City taxes? And how would they live through the invasion of heavy machinery ripping out their road and pushing down hundreds of the trees they currently see from their front door?
Like any family, Creek Bend has its country cousins. Bonavista, the adjacent community that thought that their decade-long construction period was finally almost over. Save Our Seine, perhaps slowly realizing even now that for every tree the City preserves on the riverbank there are a dozen trees on the high ground, far beyond the safety of the so-called riparian zone.
Like the outside world we will see on the news this morning, we are living in interesting times. At least Donald Trump isn’t coming to Creek Bend. I think.