Hamilton Spectator Article

Hamilton Spectator by Matthew Van Dongen-July 4 2025

Cynthia Shanahan had an unwanted front-row view in May when a housing developer started pulling down mature trees at the Millcroft Golf Club.
The Burlington resident’s home backs onto what, until recently, was a tree-dotted, seventh-hole fairway at the private 18-hole course.
The grim new vista of stumps and taped-off sand traps is a painful precursor to a controversial — but legally approved — development of 90 single-family homes and a six-storey apartment building. The project will be built on four separate pieces of a 130-acre golf course that curls through the north Burlington neighbourhood like a green figure-eight.
I was in tears … there was definitely some swearing, too,” said Shanahan, who recorded video of the razing of 400-plus trees across four fenced-off former holes, which combined cover 30 acres.
Stumps of some of the more than 400 trees cut down by a developer planning to build homes on the Millcroft golf course in Burlington. The tree-cutting effort in May spurred an ongoing bylaw investigation and stop-work order.

The longtime resident isn’t mourning the lost par-3 behind her home, but rather what she and a few thousand of her neighbours argue is a piece of critical parkland — for flood control, climate change mitigation and needed recreational green space.

While the land is privately owned, residents told The Spectator the course is often used for walking in summer or skiing in winter, while local kids fish in a picturesque sixth-hole pond now under threat of redevelopment — spurring upset neighbours to rechristen the area “Floodplain Lane.”

“I know some people might think we’re NIMBY (not in my backyard) or antidevelopment, but those people don’t understand the fear of flooding … They don’t understand what this natural space means to the whole community. We’re trying to make them understand,” said Shanahan, an organizer with Millcroft Against Bad Development, a group that claims 7,000 members.

The group has lately set its sights on explaining the issue to the premier of Ontario.

“Doug Ford should come visit us,” she said. “If he saw what was at stake, I think he would understand.”

By contrast, the landowner and prospective builder, Argo Development Corp., argues the approved development plan will add needed housing while allowing for continued golf on a smaller, reconfigured course, with engineered stormwater measures to prevent flooding. In a recent letter to Burlington council, Argo president Scott Bland also emphasized the course is “privately owned land — not a public asset, not a public park and not a public recreational amenity.”

The province’s land tribunal recently sided with that view, approving the building plan over the objections of irate neighbours and the City of Burlington.

Regardless, Shanahan said the battle over lost trees is just the latest — “and not the last” — skirmish in a years-long effort by residents to stop, or at least severely curtail, the planned development, which could see home construction start as early as next year.

Recently, the group enlisted the support of past Burlington citizen of the year and business icon Ron Foxcroft, who made a video appeal to the premier to intervene in the “tragic development.”

Even as heavy machinery rumbled behind Shanahan’s home in May, furious neighbours were swamping the City of Burlington and even federal wildlife authorities with complaints. The resulting city bylaw investigation, which is ongoing, prompted a stop-work order.

Argo Development did not respond to Spectator requests for comment, but it has posted online emphasizing all work to date “was undertaken only after the necessary approvals were obtained” and that 2,600 new trees will be planted as part of development.

The grassroots opposition to the build actually dates back years.

A recap:

Area residents organized to push the city to say “no” to the building plan first pitched in 2020 — only to see the developer later appeal directly to a provincial tribunal;
The group then successfully raised money to pay for a planner and lawyer to make sure resident voices were heard at the Ontario Land Tribunal. Just last summer, the panel sided with the developer;
Members have since lobbied provincial MPPs and backed the City of Burlington in its repeated requests for the Tory government to protect the golfing green space via a minister’s zoning order (MZO);
They’ve so far been turned down by two different housing ministers — although the latest, Minister Rob Flack, recently asked a provincial facilitator to work with the city and developer.
In a letter to Mayor Marianne Meed Ward, Flack said given the province’s “priority to increase housing supply,” it would be “premature” to issue a MZO protecting the remainder of the golf course. But he urged the parties to negotiate a solution.

It’s still unclear if that facilitated negotiation will happen.

In a recent letter to Burlington council, Argo president Bland suggested the landowner would consider selling up to 70 acres of the remaining golf course to the city. But he also insisted council abandon what he characterized as an unfair request for a MZO meant to “appease” neighbours “who believe that our privately-owned lands somehow belong to them.”

Burlington council will discuss the facilitator offer at its July meeting, said Meed Ward.

The mayor argued the city has learned a “bitter lesson” during the dispute and costly tribunal hearing, which she said yielded a “devastating” result for a city that planned for the strategic green space when the Millcroft community was first created. “We learned putting something in your official plan is simply not good enough, because … a tribunal that is unelected can just change it,” she said.

Meed Ward said the city supports the resident group’s direct plea to Ford. “At this point, he’s the only one who can stop it.”

That was the group’s rationale for enlisting the well-known Foxcroft, who posted a video appeal to Ford asking him to “blow the whistle” on the development.

In an interview, the Fox 40 whistle inventor stressed he is “a great supporter of builders and developers,” but added he is concerned about building and axing trees on green space that residents believe are critical to flood control. Residents have posted photos and videos of themselves knee-deep in water along the course during memorable flooding events.

That argument resonated with Foxcroft, who lives in the city — if not in the neighbourhood — and chaired Burlington’s 2014 flood disaster fundraising efforts.

The Spectator reached out to the premier’s office for reaction, but was redirected to the province’s housing ministry.

Foxcroft said he has not heard directly from Ford, but was alerted via a staffer in the premier’s office about the offer of a provincial facilitator.

“I believe there is always room for compromise,” he said.