CENTRE WELLINGTON - Township councillor called a notice of motion to designate the Pierpoint Park as a Centre Wellington designated cultural landscape site as a way to steer it clear from future truck bypass development.
At the virtual council meeting earlier this week, Coun. Stephen Kitras brought a notice of motion on the possibility of working with the Ontario Historical Society, the Guelph Black Heritage, Canadian and Ontario Heritage Archives and concerned citizens to outline the area of historical designation of Pierpoint Park.
Kitras noted that the township doesn’t know how big Pierpoint’s land actually is, and is calling for the township to work with the respective organizations to figure out the historical designated lands.
Once figured out, he wants to add the park to Centre Wellington’s heritage cultural landscape, and designate the park on the Official Plan as a park and recreational lands.
“Generally, there’s this long unexplored history for Centre Wellington and that area’s history. There is a park and it was a donation of 10 acres from a citizen, but it may not be the whole scope of what it is. So, my motion is to try and figure out what the size of it is and then we can designate it because it has the heritage aspect to it,” explained Kitras in a phone interview.
“We’re in shortage of parkland. It was designated in the master park direct plan that we’re 20 acres too short. So, I said if we can designate the area after finding out the scope of it, if it’s larger, maybe we can have the whole area that was a settlement and use it as a parkland.”
Kitras explained that if the land is bigger than expected, he wants the township to purchase 20 acres of it and use it as a parkland as a way to make up for the shortage and steer it clear from the future truck bypass development.
“I feel it’s important to really start this process even though it might be a decade before they plan the bridge or anything like that but it’s good to get that into place before rather than react after the fact,” said Kitras.
The Centre Wellington Transportation Master Plan proposed a truck bypass route in 2019 that included the construction of a new bridge across the Grand River which is suggested to link Wellington Road 29 and Anderson Street, north of Wellington Road 18.
Pierpoint neighborhood group has spoken as delegates numerous times to county and township council and committees advocating for the removal of the bridge crossing as a “preferred alternative”. They want to protect the natural and historically significant values of the park.
Township staff have expressed that the route shown in the county master plan at the crossing is an unopened road allowance that extends from Wellington Road 29 to Anderson Street, which encompasses the crossing of that location.
Essentially, the park will be located just west of that unopened road allowance and the road will swing to the east through the farmland and will connect to county road 19.
Council will further discuss Kitras’ motion at a later council meeting in March.
