Karen Cilevitz, chair of the David Dunlap Observatory DefendersDella Rollins for The Globe and Mail
For 76 years, the telescope at the David Dunlap Observatory has penetrated the night sky. While it scanned the relatively immutable heavens, ground-level suburban development encroached on all sides, to the point where its surrounding forests and fields are now an isolated patch of green in the heavily subdivided south end of Richmond Hill.
The place where astronomers first confirmed the existence of black holes may now be spiralling toward one of its own. During a meeting last Tuesday that went past midnight and had to be moved to a hotel conference room to accommodate the crush of interested attendees, town council rejected a developer's proposal to build 833 houses on the observatory's 76 hectares of land, meaning the case will be drawn into pre-hearings at the Ontario Municipal Board next week. The sometimes unknowable forces at work within the OMB have many worried about what might get spit out the other side.
At issue is the weight that will be given to the rights of the landowners, Corsica Developments Inc., versus the abilities of local politicians to guide development and protect cultural, natural and recreational sites.
Corsica spokesperson Michael Pozzebon declined comment this week, but in an e-mail last year when the proposal was submitted, he insisted that Corsica would preserve all culturally significant buildings and believed "the park-like setting of the observatory and administrative building, including the surrounding landscape, should be conserved."
But regional and local councillor Brenda Hogg says the proposal, which set aside six per cent of land for parks and 20 per cent for heritage groundsRichmond Hill.
"None of this should be an issue," says Mr. Dilse. "The province could have used its own authority to protect the site. Instead it walked away. And the university has just glided through this. What were the interests at play in developing that property? I've been doing this for 32 years and that property is unique. It doesn't add up. I don't know what's behind it all."
Special to The Globe and Mail