City and Casino Free Sudbury heading to court over KED

Casino Free Sudbury is bringing the City of Greater Sudbury to the Ontario Superior Court of Justice to deal with the Kingsway Entertainment District.

For months the KED project has been delayed by appeals to the Local Planning Appeal Tribunal by several groups that are in opposition to the project.

In April, Tom Fortin with Casino Free Sudbury announced the group made an application to Ontario Superior Court to have as a backup, depending on decisions made by the LPAT.

A month ago, LPAT announced a case management conference on August. 8, 2019, between the city, the downtown Business Improvement Association, Tom Fortin and Casino Free Sudbury and developer Dario Zulich. It also announced that several issues did not fall within its jurisdiction.

One of those issues is the bias or fettering issue, which Fortin says needs to be discussed, so after deliberation and consultation within the group, they've decided to go ahead with the superior court application.

"Simply because the majority of issues before LPAT are a matter of law, what the city is doing, does it conform with the official plans, environmental laws, these sorts of things," Fortin said.

"There was one issue, the bias issue has to do with procedural errors in the process and they were just too important to pass by, so we decided to proceed with the application." .

Fortin said the bias issue is whether or not the city followed the proper procedures during the planning process, which has certain rules and regulations to follow, which is why Fortin said he wants to see this brought to the superior court.

Jeff MacIntyre, the former chair of the downtown BIA says the association will not be involved in the superior court application. 

"Since the beginning, a couple of people have tried to frame this as downtown versus the city... and we've had a couple of politicians locally that have really tried to pin this all on the BIA," said MacIntyre.

"We decided it was best to let the rest of the group move forward with this lawsuit and not participate in the superior court action."

The city received notice about the superior court application on Tuesday.

"We continue to respect the process and will let it take its course. These are important projects that will shape the future of our city. I just hope we have resolution as soon as possible," Mayor Brian Bigger said.

Fortin said his group is requesting a temporary stay of the LPAT proceedings pending the outcome of the superior court application.

"The bottom line for me is, I think the combined projects in the downtown and the Kingsway, although I'm for a new event centre, I think that you know, by splitting it up and having two competing entertainment districts... it's just the wrong direction for the city to go in," Fortin said.