Burlington Council Unanimously Supports Vision for St. Luke’s Window to the Lake Opportunity
At our May 21 meeting, Burlington Council unanimously approved having City staff collaborate with St. Luke's Church for a window-to-the-lake opportunity featuring a new publicly-accessible walkway from Elgin Street to Lakeshore Road on the boulevard.See the approved full motion from Council, My Take, and the associated staff report and related documents below — as well as additional background information further down this post.
APPROVED MOTION:
- Authorize the Executive Director of Environment, Infrastructure and Community Services to collaborate with St. Luke’s Church on the feasibility of a new publicly accessible walkway from Elgin Street to Lakeshore on the Boulevard as outlined in recreation, community and culture department report RCC-08-24.
MY TAKE:We have been blessed by the vision of our community from generations ago to protect the landscape corridor from historic St. Luke’s parish hall to the lake. It is protected from any development, and not only preserves views through to the lake, but also provides a park that can be enhanced for community use. I’m so grateful to the volunteers at St. Luke’s for their vision to take the next steps to design a formal path and park for community use, in partnership with the city.
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To read the staff report and related supporting documents, please click/tap the links below:
- Staff report: RCC-08-24 St. Luke's Window to the Lake opportunity.pdf
- Appendices:
- Presentation: RCC-08-24 delegate presentation Rev. Canon Stuart Pike and Rick Reycraft.pdf
BACKGROUND:St. Luke’s Anglican Church is located on the north side of Elgin Street between Nelson Avenue and Burlington Street in downtown Burlington. Directly across from the church, is a long narrow stretch of land that is owned in part by the City and the Church. Refer to Appendix A – Context Map. Since the original construction of the church in 1834, this long stretch of land that extends from the south side of Elgin Street to Lakeshore Road has provided an uninterrupted view to Lake Ontario and any changes to this landscape, in recent years, have been at the surface level only in order to protect this significant view corridor.The Church has approached the ward Councillor and City staff to see if there is an interest in working together to build an accessible public walkway from Elgin to Lakeshore which would span across lands owned by both the City and the Church. The lands owned by the Church are referred to as “Church Avenue”.This concept is sound however, one of the biggest challenges with this idea is that the city-owned lands to the north currently support the parking lot driveway entrance into Lot #10. The driveway is a physical barrier to safe pedestrian movement through Church Avenue.Since the City owns the lands in the former Hydro/Rail Corridor between Church Avenue and Nelson Avenue, it is possible to relocate the parking lot #10 driveway entrance to Nelson Avenue and eliminate all vehicular traffic in Church Avenue. This would free up the landscape for pedestrian-only movement and use of the space. Refer to Appendix B – Driveway Relocation and Proposed Walkway Plan.After some initial meetings, staff feel that this is a great opportunity to explore and would like Council’s support and direction to proceed further with the proposal.