Consultations, Communications, and Openness

Landlab believes that community engagement is a critical component of designing complete communities. For the Lakeport Beach proposal, our comprehensive public engagement program will include in person and virtual events, and we will be providing easy access to our planning reports and key documents. We will continue to engage with residents, businesses, the Township of Alnwick/Haldimand and Northumberland County openly and transparently.

The land for our proposed project is located in the southeast corner of Alnwick/Haldimand and has been slated for development since 2006. The site, one of the few large parcels slated for development in Alnwick/Haldimand, is too important a community resource to unimaginatively divide into 70-ish wasteful lots, each with a multi-million-dollar McMansion.

Lakeport Beach will not look like the suburban developments that have carpeted the landscape since the 1960s. Making the best use of the land means providing multiple housing types suited for people of all ages, family sizes, abilities, and incomes, while also preserving and enhancing green spaces throughout. Our community and land use planning is based on how old villages were designed and we are excited to have open discussions with existing residents about their concerns and their ideas. We are aware that our approach is very different than other developers.

We want to be sure that when this land is developed that it respects the important environmental and First Nations priorities, that it is developed in a way that creates jobs and economic opportunity for the whole community, and that it provides housing opportunities for a wide range of ages and incomes. And since this land is already slated for development, we want to be sure that enough density is planned there that it takes development pressure off surrounding farmland.

Over the past few months we have had individual conversations with over 200 current residents of Alnwick/Haldimand about what the community needs, and through our engagement program we will continue to work with interested residents and businesses to ensure that our plan not only addresses current concerns but sets the stage for an economically, environmentally and socially sustainable future.

In our ongoing effort to consult with the community, we have scheduled the first of a series of townhall meetings for March 22nd. We believe that public communication and consultation is important and leads to better, stronger community results. A lot of people are threatened by this approach because they get nervous about open conversation that they can’t control, while opponents have a vested interest in trying to block everything but their own message. At the end of the day, though, as a local landowner, we have a right to host an open discussion about our plans and we think that the public has a right to be involved in the discussion.

We strongly believe that Lakeport Beach represents a win-win opportunity for Alnwick/Haldimand and we are very heartened by both the positive response we have received so far and the honest conversations we’ve been having with the community. We’ll keep listening and keep planning and we hope you’ll join us at our first townhall meeting on March 22nd.