The Record covered Scott Harrison’s proposals for Cumberland this week. The part about the 250-unit apartment complex was left to the last paragraph. Call me cynical, but I think this is an attempt to downplay the effects of a project this size, and may be intentionally misleading. I think most people reading this article would miss the enormous implications of this proposal, while they focused on the other less controversial ones elaborated on in the article.

I have been doing some comparisons of my own to get a picture of Scott Harrison’s apartment/commercial dream for Beaufort Ave. I lived in Victoria for five years when my kids went through high school. We lived in an apartment on Superior Street. It was built in the 70’s, and spanned the whole block between Superior and Michigan, and it was about the same length as the lot on Beaufort Ave. I think the footprint was comparable. It was 70 units, and four stories high.

Now, if you were going to fit 250 units onto that same area, how many stories would that be? Ten? Twelve? I don’t know, because I haven’t seen the drawings yet, but I do have the skill to go online and find some other buildings to compare this with. Please take the time to look at these pictures of 250-unit apartment complexes, and imagine how Cumberland will look with something like them right in the middle of town. You should be very concerned about the form that residential growth takes in Cumberland. Read the OCP and see what it says about this.