Residents out in force to protest Oakville Amazon warehouse location

Protestors lined Cornwall Road in front of an empty warehouse for several hours Saturday (Oct. 23), building awareness among their neighbours of what the future holds for the facility.

In January of this year, the town approved a settlement offered by warehouse owner H&R Reit to allow Amazon to use the 314,166-square-foot property, located at 2175 Cornwall Rd., as a delivery station.

The site, which is located across the street from a southeast Oakville neighbourhood, would see multiple transport trucks arrive per day for unloading at the site. Delivery vans would then be loaded with a day's worth of deliveries for Amazon.ca customers in Oakville, Burlington, Mississauga, Etobicoke and Toronto.

A traffic impact study anticipates that up to 200 employees will be working on site at any given time. The parking lot will be expanded to 689 spaces.

When a group of concerned citizens caught wind of plans for the massive" site, it mobilized, forming Residents for a Livable Oakville to fight the project through numerous letters, delegations to town council, a petition which gathered thousands of names and the funding of their own traffic impact report. This was their first protest.

We were very, very happy with the turnout (today). What was really outstanding to all of us was the amount of people that came and dropped by that were not aware of the situation at all. It was incredible," said group member Dyanne Dumas.

Saturday was an opportunity to hand out flyers and enlighten people on what the group feels will bring traffic congestion, noise, pollution and safety issues.

It's been a challenge because of COVID; it's hard to get residents aware of the situation."

We just can't take a backseat and say it's a lost cause. We just feel that together collectively we have to make our voices heard," she said.

- With files from David Lea.