Ontario Court of Appeal Ruling Insightful for Future of LaSalle Park – TPR Hamilton | Hamilton's Civic Affairs News Site

February 25, 2019
Burlington’s LaSalle Park is fully owned by the City of Hamilton, and the lease between the City of Burlington and Hamilton expires in 2022.
This is not dissimilar to the situation in Northern Ontario’s Timiskaming District where the Town of Cobalt owns a 114.67 acre tract of land in the nearby Township of Coleman which was previously a municipal park used by the residents of Coleman.
Last week, the Ontario Court of Appeal upheld a lower court ruling which decided that the Township of Coleman’s zoning by-laws apply to the former park, and that the Town of Cobalt cannot conduct a large-scale aggregate extraction operation in violation of those by-laws.
In short, even if the City of Hamilton were to end the lease of the LaSalle Park property to the City of Burlington, the City of Burlington will retain land use planning control of the land.
LaSalle Park is presently zoned as parkland, and Burlington would have to either agree, or more likely the City of Hamilton would have to engage in litigation, to change the zoning.