.....james bradshaw reports on the public meeting last week on the Traffic Study......online.......

Tranquility threatened, residents tell forum

JAMES BRADSHAW

NIAGARA-ON-THE-LAKE, ONT. — From Monday's Globe and Mail Last updated on Monday, Jul. 27, 2009 03:45AM EDT

For the first time, residents of Niagara-on-the-Lake engaged in a full-scale public debate on Project Niagara. Last week's meeting (which lasted a vigorous four hours) was the first of several such forums as the proposed music festival takes shape - and as the community decides whether to embrace it.

New details unveiled to the public by project organizers may have won over some fence-sitters. But there remains a determined cadre of locals who would prefer not to see the proposed 17-week, 50-concert summer music festival come to town each summer.

Nearly 300 people packed the gymnasium of a public high school to hear presentations from Project Niagara's brass and to raise their concerns, a format that will be repeated every three to four months while the event is being debated.

Residents remain divided on the plan. The Harmony Residents Group, which counts some 600 members, has been vocal in its opposition. But while their members, and other detractors, dominated the forum, a newly formed group of supporters, Community Builders, recently attracted nearly 400 people to their inaugural meeting.

Kari Cullen, Project Niagara's manager, assured last week's assembly that the festival "intends to be a good neighbour" and trumpeted the allure of a world-class music festival in Canada. But the primary focus of the evening was a traffic study commissioned by Project Niagara and executed by Ontario-based international consultants Delcan, which dominated the question-and-answer period.

Residents repeatedly questioned the accuracy and scope of the study's findings. Project manager Nick Palomba remained adamant that the calculations are based on "worse than worst-case" assumptions.

Doug Stewart of Parks Canada, meanwhile, answered a proposal from the Harmony Group to turn the federally-owned 108.5-hectare site targeted for the festival into an eco-park instead. He said Project Niagara would be the catalyst for improving and opening up the land, closed to the public for decades, and it's unlikely the government would invest in the site without it. (Parks Canada is studying how to use the 80 hectares not occupied by Project Niagara.) For his part, Project Niagara architect Bruce Kuwabara - who also designed the nearby Jackson-Triggs winery - tried to spur the crowd to look to the town's future. "It's a great town, and it's changed. History doesn't freeze dry. This place is dynamic," he said.

Yet Gracia Janes, a member of the Niagara-on-the-Lake Conservancy, wasn't sold: "Where can we all get these rose-coloured glasses," she asked, wondering aloud what it would take for organizers to abandon their plans.

Many other residents at the meeting made impassioned pleas about the intrusions they suffer at the hands of the town's other tourist attractions, drawing applause.

But one onlooker was disappointed with the questioning. "A small town at its worst," he said. "I haven't heard one word about vision."

The National Arts Centre and the Toronto Symphony Orchestra joined forces five years ago to create Project Niagara, which would feature the NAC and TSO as well as other international orchestras, jazz, blues, pop, opera and world music acts. The festival would need $76.5-million in capital funding and would operate on a $20-million annual budget raised from its own revenues and the private sector.

The federal and provincial governments have yet to decide whether to grant $25.5-million each in capital funding.