ClubLink’s push to replace the Kanata Golf and Country Club with 1,480 housing units has cleared another legal challenge.
The proposal has prompted a maelstrom of local opposition for years, including a failed attempt by the City of Ottawa to argue its case at the Supreme Court.
The city did win a court challenge in 2021, but an Ontario Superior Court ruling reversed that decision in favour of owner ClubLink, finding the corporation shouldn’t be “saddled with a perpetual obligation” to run a golf course.
On Tuesday, the Court of Appeal for Ontario dismissed the city’s appeal of the pro-ClubLink decision.
Central to the debate is a 1981 agreement to protect “open space.”
The pre-amalgamation City of Kanata entered into a series of agreements with former owner Campeau Corporation in the 1980s, which laid out rules to incorporate a golf course to align with rules dictating that 40 per cent remain open space.
One of the more recent court decisions in favour of ClubLink stated the “original intent” of these documents left the door open to future development.
When it announced the development in 2018, ClubLink — which owns and operates about 30 golf clubs across Ontario and Quebec — stated that golf courses are struggling to exist in Ottawa’s oversaturated market because of rising maintenance costs.
Some people who live in the hundreds of homes bordering the course have said they worry the area cannot handle this kind of sharp intensification especially when it comes to stormwater management.