According to minutes of a closed-door meeting of the general committee of city council held in September, urban planning director Joanne Poirier reported that the Planning Advisory Committee received a request for the establishment of a temporary access road on the definite location of the emergency path from Glen Road to the MUHC site.

Former mayor Karin Marks had expressed concerns that eventually the intended purpose of the access road might be changed to accommodate traffic and/or ambulances. She requested that a resolution city council had drafted years before to allow the emergency road be made more specific.

“Part of the condition of giving the permit to the MUHC to build the road was that it was not to be used for access or egress other than for emergency vehicles,” Director General Duncan Campbell told The Examiner. “When we gave the permit to the MUHC, it was conditional on those limitations.

“During the construction period, this road will not be used for construction purposes,” he added. “In other words we don’t want to see trucks coming into the site using this access.”

Campbell said two conditions in an agreement for the transfer of the MUHC site to the consortium that will be developing it were that the site had to be decontaminated and the access road had to be built.

“There was a certain urgency to get these done, but the access road is built just for emergency vehicles such as fire trucks. It won’t be the access road for ambulances, nor will it be an alternate road to get into the site for employees or clients or people visiting the hospital when it is built.”

Mayor Peter Trent suggests that the agreement to use the road for emergencies only could be made more secure by creating a servitude in favour of the City. “I’ve actually talked to the MUHC on that subject and they didn’t say no, in fact they indicated that they probably could do it,” he said.

Trent said the current agreement is based only on zoning, whereas a servitude would be a “convenant that they would not use that for any other purpose. From a legal standpoint it would probably be more meaningful and easily enforced.”