Part Three of a Northern Hoot examination of population forecasts, housing need, public land, and the City’s decision to include neighbourhood parkland among its housing Opportunity Sites. Part One can be read here: Thunder Bay’s Housing Panic: The Numbers Do Not Lead to Arundel Part Two can be read here: Thunder Bay’s Housing Panic: The City Knew
A Road to Where?
Residents arrived at Terralux’s July 20 public information meeting, hosted by Stantec, expecting answers about the latest redesign of what has become the largest apartment proposal in Thunder Bay’s history -two seven-storey apartment buildings containing 360 residential units, but many came with an even bigger question after Version 4 of the proposed development design introduced a “Future Access Road” extending toward neighbouring 755 Arundel parkland, a feature absent from every previous design that left residents asking a simple question: Why is a development proposed for 791 Arundel already planning beyond the boundaries of 791 Arundel?
Stantec described the road as “good planning” connected to a future transportation corridor identified in the City’s Transportation Master Plan, while a City official told TBNewsWatch that the same connection related to the future realignment of Lyon Boulevard, leaving residents with two different explanations for one new piece of infrastructure and one obvious question: What is the City really planning for the Boulevard Lake greenspace complex?
Every road is built to connect something, every road serves a purpose, and every road points somewhere, making the appearance of a new access toward 755 Arundel impossible to dismiss as a meaningless line on a drawing when that neighbouring property is also publicly owned Community Zone parkland sitting immediately beside the proposed development.
Council is now being asked to approve the rezoning of 791 Arundel without first explaining why the latest design already anticipates movement beyond the boundaries of the property before them or whether residents have only been shown the first chapter of a much larger plan.
How Much Did Terralux Already Know?
Residents cannot answer that question because neither the City nor Terralux has publicly explained what information was available to proponents before the Opportunity Sites process began.
However, another revelation emerged during that same July 20 meeting when Lori Santink, TBay Greenspace Preservation, learned from Stantec that the City had hired their firm in May 2024 -roughly a full year before the Opportunity Sites process became public, to prepare a Planning Due Diligence Memo for 791 Arundel, only to watch the same consulting firm later appear as Terralux’s engineering consultant after the successful proposal had been selected.
Stantec representatives assured Santink that neither the firm nor the City viewed that sequence of events as a conflict of interest, yet another question immediately surfaced because conflict is only one part of the story when the far more compelling issue concerns knowledge, timing, and transparency.
How much did Terralux know before residents knew anything at all, what planning assumptions had already been established before the Opportunity Sites process began, and did the successful proponent have access to information about the broader Boulevard Lake area long before the public was invited into the conversation?
Municipal Freedom of Information records obtained by Lori Santink reveal that the City’s Planning Manager, Aaron Ward, considered 791 Arundel to be the “most politically/neighbourhood-sensitive parcel.”
Ward did not arrive at that conclusion because Current River is home to unusually “politically sensitive” residents, nor because the City had undertaken extensive public engagement demonstrating extraordinary neighbourhood opposition long before the proposal became public. The parcel is politically sensitive because the 791 Arundel parkland and neighbouring 755 Arundel parkland form part of one of Thunder Bay’s most heavily used and deeply valued public greenspace systems. Families, walkers, runners, cyclists, birdwatchers, and dog owners have used the Boulevard Lake parklands for decades. Anyone familiar with the area would understand that proposing development on THIS Community Zone parkland was always going to generate significant public concern.
Understanding why the 791 Arundel parkland was identified as the City’s most politically sensitive parcel becomes even more important when viewed alongside the newest site plan, which now includes a future access road extending toward the neighbouring 755 Arundel parkland and leaves residents asking whether the proposal before Council concerns only the 791 Arundel parkland or signals a broader development goal for the future of the Boulevard Lake greenspace.
The Numbers Nobody Challenged
Public confidence in the City and the City’s processes suffered an early blow in November 2025, when City staff presented Council with survey results showing only 142 participants across the Opportunity Sites initiative and only 52 written comments relating specifically to Arundel, figures representing approximately 0.13% and 0.05% of Thunder Bay’s population despite the proposal involving the permanent conversion of Community Zone parkland.
Council accepted those numbers without asking whether residents had been adequately informed, without questioning whether meaningful public awareness had actually occurred, and without examining whether participation measured in fractions of one 1% could reasonably be presented as a successful engagement process.
Growing public frustration reflects a pattern in which residents continue discovering major pieces of the story only after crucial planning decisions appear to have been moving forward behind the scenes, including four evolving site plans, incomplete technical reports, difficult access to environmental information, planning work completed before the public process began, and a new road pointing toward another publicly owned greenspace.
Public trust becomes extraordinarily difficult to rebuild when people believe they are discovering the real story one document, one meeting, and one Municipal Freedom of Information request at a time.
A Bigger Picture
Questions surrounding the 791 Arundel parkland become even harder to ignore when viewed alongside the City’s own Housing Land Needs Study, which identified enough residential land capacity to accommodate nearly 20,000 housing units while projecting a need for fewer than 9,000 units under the highest population growth scenario, all without relying on either the 791 or 755 Arundel parkland. The Province has also identified the former Lakehead Psychiatric Hospital (LPH) lands for future redevelopment. While that proposal generated significant public concern of its own, the site represents previously developed land rather than the permanent conversion of Community Zone parkland.
Current River residents have never argued that Thunder Bay should stop building housing, yet many continue asking why Community Zone parkland became the chosen battleground when the City’s own studies identified thousands of units of available capacity elsewhere and when another large redevelopment opportunity already exists on LPH’s developed land.
Growing public mistrust no longer centres solely on two 7-storey apartment buildings because the larger concern now involves transparency, confidence in the planning process, confidence in Terralux’s proposal after four significant design revisions -and incomplete reports thus far, confidence in the City’s willingness to fully disclose its long-term intentions for the Boulevard Lake area, and confidence that Council has been given the complete picture before being asked to make the most significant parkland decisions in Thunder Bay’s history.
Residents deserve clear answers before Council casts its vote because once community zoned parkland is rezoned and the precedent is established, no amount of reassurance will restore the trust that has already been lost.
