A unanimous chorus of residents urged city council Monday to join them and a couple of local retail developers in opposing a shopping centre proposed for the former Lafarge site.

Twenty-eight delegations addressed council, and 28 spoke against the proposed development on the 54-acre former gravel pit site in central Guelph. Most were from the Howitt Park Neighbourhood Residents' Association, which has incorporated and hired a lawyer to fight the plan at the Ontario Municipal Board.

"I think going to the OMB over this issue will be a good use of taxpayers' dollars," said Susan Watson, urging council to join the fight.

Watson said that if the developers - Rosewater Management Group of Woodbridge, Ont. and Toronto-based Fieldgate Properties - want to continue with the OMB case, they should first speak to lawyers for 6&7 Developments, which had to fight for many years at the OMB to bring a Wal-Mart to the city's north end.

"They'll find Guelph has the stamina for long innings," Watson said. "I say bring it on."

City council is to take a position on the development application shortly before an OMB prehearing set for June 12. The final decision, though, is up to the OMB.

Watson also said the developer had shown a "lack of respect" for Guelph residents by launching the OMB challenge last year against what it claimed was city council's "refusal or neglect" to rezone the vacant land, which now has industrial zoning.

The OMB "is still being used as a blunt instrument to bully communities," she charged.

Watson was among the delegations heard during the six-hour meeting in an overcrowded council chambers, where many people had to stand or sit on the floor.

Unlike the fight against Wal-Mart's plan to build on a north end site contrary to the city's Official Plan, the looming battle over the Lafarge site isn't being led by downtown business interests - even though the Lafarge site is closer to downtown than the Wal-Mart.

Instead, it is 6&7 Developments, which wants to expand a shopping centre near Wal-Mart, and Armel Corp., which is developing one in the west end, that have joined the Howitt Park neighbourhood association in obtaining full party status for the OMB case. The city and the developer have also been granted party status by the OMB.

No 6&7 representatives spoke Monday, but Armel's Chris Corosky urged council to reject the Lafarge plan. He said council shouldn't support such a plan until four commercial developments on the city's outskirts that were approved in 2005 as part of a new commercial policy for Guelph are built.

The proposed 400,000-sq.-ft. Lafarge development, which would include two large big-box outlets as well as smaller stores, "will severely impact our ability to develop" the West Hills commercial development that includes the west end Zehrs, Corosky said.

The Lafarge development "would largely replace other approved commercial locations. That would be us," he said.

The second phase of the proposed 45-acre West Hills shopping centre near Paisley and Elmira roads hasn't yet found tenants for all its space, and a third phase has yet to be built on 10 acres there, Corosky said.

He said he doesn't understand why commercial tenants who might go to the Lafarge site can't locate on approved developments like his on the city's outskirts, "where the same traffic issues wouldn't occur."

Anticipated traffic woes were high on the list of objections to the Lafarge plan voiced Monday by members of the Howitt Park Neighbourhood Residents' Association.

Traffic on a two-lane stretch of Paisley Road north of the proposed development is "already quite absurd," and the situation "will be many times worse" if the development goes ahead, said Steve Hodge, who has two young children at Paisley Road school.

Access to the triangular site bounded by railway tracks on two sides and by the Hanlon Expressway on the other is difficult, and the developers are proposing access by extending Silvercreek Parkway from the south and from the north. Access from the north would require building an expensive underpass beneath the CN mainline just south of Paisley Road.

It's still not clear who would pay for the underpass. Representatives for the developers suggested Monday that the city might pay for it through the development charges it collects from new development.

Ron Foley, acting president of the 102-member Howitt Park association, said the underpass issue needs to be addressed before anything else. He sought assurances that the underpass cost would "be put fully on the back of the developer."

There are "many unanswered questions about this application, and the underpass is only one of them," Foley said.

"I love my neighbourhood because it is peaceful and it is quiet," said neighbourhood association member Lynne Francis, who raised concerns about traffic as well as air pollution, light pollution and noise pollution, particularly from trucks entering the development.

Paul Campeau, a new resident on Inkerman Street near the Lafarge site, said the idea of building big box stores "beside century homes, historical homes" struck him as being "ridiculous." It would bring down property values, he said.

Chantelle Boudreau and Mary Macleod said Guelph should embrace a "contemporary" design model for a mixed, small-scale commercial and residential development on the Lafarge site. They suggested that the site, not far west of the downtown, might be called "West Village" and would "tie in seamlessly" with the existing neighbourhood.

"There is an opportunity to create something amazing and to leave a legacy of which we can be proud," Boudreau said.

Adrienne Corning of the Guelph Civic League said the proposed development would hurt the "environmental and social fabric" of the Howitt Park neighbourhood, but it was more than just a concern for neighbours. "It is a city issue, not a neighbourhood issue," she said.

Lee Phillips of the Guelph Bible Conference Centre, located on 11 acres just south of the Lafarge site, said the "massive" proposed development will "destroy the privacy we have enjoyed" since 1934.

David Graham said part of the Lafarge site should be preserved for a future GO Train station and parking area.

It's a better site than downtown, where parking for future GO Train commuters would be in short supply, Graham said. He suggested the rest of the Lafarge site might be used for high rise residences for people who could walk to the GO station to commute to jobs in other cities.

Under this plan the CN mainline tracks bordering the Lafarge site would become an asset, not a liability, he said.