November 13, 2023, at 4:00 PM

Original link

The meeting is called to order at 4:01 PM; it being noted that Councillor S. Hillier was in remote attendance.

1.   Disclosures of Pecuniary Interest

That it BE NOTED that no pecuniary interests were disclosed.

2.   Consent

Moved by A. Hopkins

Seconded by S. Lewis

That Items 2.1 and 2.2 BE APPROVED.

Motion Passed (5 to 0)

2.1   Application for Brownfield CIP Incentives - 400 Southdale Road East

2023-11-13 Staff Report - (2.1) 400 Southdale Road East - Brownfield CIP Incentives - Full

Moved by A. Hopkins

Seconded by S. Lewis

That, on the recommendation of the Director, Economic Services and Supports, the following actions be taken with respect to the application by LJM Developments (Halton Hills) Inc., relating to the property located at 400 Southdale Road East:

a) a total expenditure of up to a maximum of $624,000 in municipal brownfield financial incentives BE APPROVED at the Municipal Council meeting to be held on November 28, 2023, and BE ALLOCATED under the Community Improvement Plan (CIP) for Brownfield Incentives (‘Brownfield CIP’):

i) APPROVAL BE GIVEN to provide a grant through the Development Charges Rebate Program for the eligible remediation costs, as follows:

A) if development charges are paid in one lump sum amount, the Development Charges Rebate grant will be issued in one instalment; and,

B) if development charges are paid annually over six years, the Development Charges Rebate grant will be issued in six annual instalments, noting that any interest charged by the City of London for deferred development charge payments is not included in the rebate;

b) the applicant BE REQUIRED to enter into an agreement with the City of London outlining the relevant terms and conditions for the incentives that have been approved by Municipal Council under the Brownfield CIP; the agreement between The Corporation of the City of London and LJM Developments (Halton Hills) Inc. will be transferable and binding on any subsequent property owner(s);

it being noted that no grants will be provided through the Brownfield CIP until:

i) all remediation work approved under this application is finished;

ii) the payment of development charges has begun;

iii) a Record of Site Condition is filed with the Government of Ontario’s Environmental Site Registry;

iv)  The Corporation of The City of London receives receipts showing the actual cost of the eligible remediation work;

it being acknowledged that any and all oral and written submissions from the public, related to this application have been, on balance, taken into consideration by Council as part of its deliberations and final decision regarding these matters. (2023-D04)

Motion Passed

2.2   Monthly Heritage Report - October 2023

2023-11-13 Staff Report - (2.2) Monthly Heritage Report - October 2023

Moved by A. Hopkins

Seconded by S. Lewis

That, the Monthly Heritage Report for October, 2023, BE RECEIVED for information.  (2023-R01)

Motion Passed

3.   Scheduled Items

3.1   6019 Hamlyn Street (Z-9654)

2023-11-13 Staff Report - (3.1) 6019 Hamlyn Street (Z-9654)

Moved by S. Lewis

Seconded by A. Hopkins

That, on the recommendation of the Director, Planning and Development, based on the application by Sifton Properties Ltd., relating to the property located at 6019 Hamlyn Street, the proposed by-law appended to the staff report dated November 13, 2023 as Appendix “A” BE INTRODUCED at the Municipal Council meeting to be held on November 28, 2023 to amend Zoning By-law No. Z.-1, (in conformity with the Official Plan for the City of London, 2016), to change the zoning of the subject property FROM  a Holding Residential R4/R5/R6/R7/R8 Special Provision (hh-100R4-3(2)R5-7(18)R6-5(74)R7(29) D75H20R8-4(62)) Zone with provisions for a maximum density of 75 units per hectare and a maximum height of 20 metres TO a Holding Residential R4/R5/R6/R7/R8 Special Provision (hh-100R4-3(2)*R5-7(18)*R6-5(74)R7(29)D100H20R8-4(_)) Zone with provision of a maximum density of 100 units per hectare and a maximum height of 20 metres;

it being pointed out that the following individual made a verbal presentation at the public participation meeting held in conjunction with these matters:

- A. Haasen, Sifton Properties Limited;

it being further noted that the Municipal Council approves this application for the following reasons:

- the recommended zoning by-law amendment is consistent with the Provincial Policy Statement;

- the recommended zone conforms to The London Plan, including but not limited to the Neighbourhoods Place Type, Environmental Review Place Type, Our Strategy, City Building and Design, Our Tools, and all other applicable The London Plan policies;

- the recommended zone conforms to the policies of the Southwest Area Secondary Plan; and,

- the recommended zone is appropriate and will permit open space/park uses consistency with the planned vision of the Neighbourhoods Place Type and built form that contributes to a sense of place, character and connectivity;

it being acknowledged that any and all oral and written submissions from the public, related to this application have been, on balance, taken into consideration by Council as part of its deliberations and final decision regarding these matters. (2023-D09)

Motion Passed (5 to 0)

Additional Votes:

Moved by A. Hopkins

Seconded by S. Franke

Motion to open the public participation meeting.

Motion Passed (5 to 0)

Moved by S. Franke

Seconded by S. Lewis

Motion to close the public participation meeting.

Motion Passed (5 to 0)

3.2   Demolition Request and Heritage Alteration Permit - 187 Wharncliffe Road North (HAP23-074-L)

2023-11-13 Staff Report - (3.2) 187 Wharncliffe Road North - Demo Request and HAP (HAP23-074-L) - Full

Moved by S. Franke

Seconded by S. Lewis

That, on the recommendation of the Director, Planning and Development, the application under Section 42 of the Ontario Heritage Act seeking approval for the demolition of the existing building and approval for a proposed new mixed use building comprised of office and residential, as described herein and shown in Appendix C, on the property at 187 Wharncliffe Road North, within the Blackfriars/Petersville Heritage Conservation District, BE PERMITTED with the following terms and conditions:

a) horizontal painted wood or fiber cement board be used for the exterior cladding of the proposed building, including the gable ends;

b) painted wood doors be used on the north and west elevations of the proposed building;

c) front (west) porch to feature panelled columns with cap and base details, and a painted wood railing/guard following EC-2 of SB-7, primed and painted;

d) side (north) porch to feature panelled columns with cap and base details, primed and painted;

e) front yard parking is prohibited;

f)  any signage for the proposed office use be limited to the small band above the west entrance and be indirectly illuminated by hanging light fixtures, as indicated on plans submitted;

g) the Heritage Planner be circulated on the Building Permit application drawings to verify compliance with this Heritage Alteration Permit prior to issuance of the Building Permit; and,

h) the Heritage Alteration Permit be displayed in a location visible from the street until the work is completed;

it being noted that the Planning and Environment Committee received a communication dated October 25, 2023, from R. Annis, with respect to this matter;

it being pointed out that the following individual made a verbal presentation at the public participation meeting held in conjunction with these matters:

  • T. Dingman;

it being acknowledged that any and all oral and written submissions from the public, related to this application have been, on balance, taken into consideration by Council as part of its deliberations and final decision regarding these matters. (2023-R01)

Motion Passed (5 to 0)

Additional Votes:

Moved by A. Hopkins

Seconded by S. Franke

Motion to open the public participation meeting.

Motion Passed (5 to 0)

Moved by A. Hopkins

Seconded by S. Lewis

Motion to close the public participation meeting.

Motion Passed (5 to 0)

3.3   607 Queens Avenue (Z-9650)

2023-11-13 Staff Report - (3.3) 607 Queens Avenue (Z-9650)

Moved by S. Franke

Seconded by S. Lewis

That, on the recommendation of the Director, Planning and Development, based on the application by 1934643 Ontario Inc., c/o Zelinka Priamo Ltd., relating to the property located at 607 Queens Avenue, the proposed by-law appended to the staff report dated November 13, 2023 as Appendix “A” BE INTRODUCED at the Municipal Council meeting to be held on November 28, 2023, to amend Zoning By-law No. Z.-1, (in conformity with the Official Plan for the City of London, 2016), to change the zoning of the subject property FROM a Residential R3 /Office Conversion (R3-1/OC5) Zone TO a Residential R3 /Office Conversion Special Provision (R3-1/OC7(_)) Zone;

it being pointed out that the following individual made a verbal presentation at the public participation meeting held in conjunction with these matters:

  • L. Jamieson, Zelinka Priamo Ltd.;

it being further noted that the Municipal Council approves this application for the following reasons:

  • the recommended amendment is consistent with the Provincial Policy Statement, 2020 (PPS), which encourages the regeneration of settlement areas and land use patterns within settlement areas that provide for a range of uses and opportunities for intensification and redevelopment;

  • the recommended amendment conforms to The London Plan, including but not limited to the Key Directions, City Design and Building policies, and the Urban Corridor Place Type policies; and;

  • the recommended amendment would permit a new land use that is considered appropriate within the surrounding context and will facilitate the adaptive reuse of the existing converted dwelling;

it being acknowledged that any and all oral and written submissions from the public, related to this application have been, on balance, taken into consideration by Council as part of its deliberations and final decision regarding these matters.   (2023-D04)

Motion Passed (5 to 0)

Additional Votes:

Moved by A. Hopkins

Seconded by S. Franke

Motion to open the public participation meeting.

Motion Passed (5 to 0)

Moved by S. Franke

Seconded by A. Hopkins

Motion to close the public participation meeting.

Motion Passed (5 to 0)

3.4   1990 Commissioners Road East and 2767 Doyle Drive (Z-9656)

2023-11-13 Staff Report - (3.4) 1990 Commissioners Road East and 2767 Doyle Road (Z-9656)

Moved by A. Hopkins

Seconded by S. Lewis

That, on the recommendation of the Director, Planning and Development, the following actions be taken with respect to the application by Lux Homes Design & Build, (c/o SBM Ltd.), relating to the property located at 1990 Commissioners Road East & 2767 Doyle Drive:

a) the proposed by-law appended to the staff report dated November 13, 2023 as Appendix “A” BE INTRODUCED at the Municipal Council meeting to be held on November 28, 2023 to amend Zoning By-law No. Z.-1, (in conformity with the Official Plan for the City of London, 2016), to change the zoning of the subject property FROM an Urban Reserve Special Provision (UR4(5)/UR4(7)) Zone, TO a Residential R5 Special Provision (R5-7(_)) Zone;

b) the Site Plan Approval Authority BE REQUESTED to consider the following design issues through the site plan process:

i) shift Blocks 1 and 2 to the west and Block 3 to the east to centralize the buildings on the site;

ii) fencing and/or landscaping be provided along the perimeter of the site to ensure adequate buffering is maintained between the subject lands and adjacent residential properties;

iii) additional tree plantings will be required to compensate for loss of trees;

iv) review short-term bicycle parking spaces allocated to the site;

v) landscaping to include at minimum 50% native species, with no invasive species planted; and,

vii) include a minimum of 5% EV charging spots;

it being pointed out that the following individuals made verbal presentations at the public participation meeting held in conjunction with these matters:

  • N. Dyjach, Strik Baldinelli Moniz; and,

  • A. Johnson;

it being further noted that the Municipal Council approves this application for the following reasons:

  • the recommended amendment is consistent with the Provincial Policy Statement 2020;

  • the recommended amendment conforms to The London Plan, including, but not limited to the Neighbourhoods Place Type and Key Directions; and,

  • the recommended amendment facilitates the development of an underutilized site within the Built Area Boundary with an appropriate form of infill development that provides choice and diversity in housing options;

it being acknowledged that any and all oral and written submissions from the public, related to this application have been, on balance, taken into consideration by Council as part of its deliberations and final decision regarding these matters.   (2023-D09)

Motion Passed (5 to 0)

Additional Votes:

Moved by S. Franke

Seconded by S. Lewis

Motion to open the public participation meeting.

Motion Passed (5 to 0)

Moved by S. Lewis

Seconded by S. Franke

Motion to close the public participation meeting.

Motion Passed (5 to 0)

3.5   978 Gainsborough Road (Z-9247)

2023-11-13 Staff Report - (3.5) 978 Gainsborough Avenue (OZ-9247)

Moved by S. Lewis

Seconded by S. Franke

That, notwithstanding the recommendation of the Director, Planning and Development, the following actions be taken with respect to the application by Highland Communities Ltd., relating to the property located at 978 Gainsborough Road:

a) the request to amend the Official Plan, The London Plan, for the City of London by AMENDING a site-specific policy for the Neighbourhoods Place Type to allow a maximum density of 370 units per hectare and a maximum height of 17-storeys, BE APPROVED;

b) the request to amend Zoning By-law No. Z.-1 to change the zoning of the subject lands FROM a Holding Residential R9 Special Provision (h-5.h-11.h-17. R9-7(17).H50) TO a Holding Residential R9 Special Provision (h-.h-5.h-11.h-110. R9-7(  ).H60 Zone to permit the development of two, 17 storey residential apartment buildings interconnected by a 6-storey podium with a total of 481 residential units, BE APPROVED;

c) the Civic Administration, including but not limited to the staff of the Municipal Housing Development team, BE DIRECTED to work with the applicant to provide for affordable housing units in the above-noted proposed development; it being noted that any such units could be a part of the Roadmap to 3,000 Affordable Units, as well as assist with Council’s Strategic focus to increase access to a range of quality affordable housing options;

d) the Civic Administration BE DIRECTED to bring forward the required implementing by-laws to the November 28, 2023 Council meeting for approval;

e) that pursuant to Section 34(17) of the Planning Act, as determined by the Municipal Council, no further notice BE GIVEN in respect of the proposed by-law as the changes will not significantly alter the proposed development circulated in the Notice of Public Meeting; and,

f) The Site Plan Approval Authority BE REQUESTED to consider the following design issues through the site plan process:

i) include a highly visible and distinguishable principal building entrance for pedestrians on the north elevation. This entrance should be designed with architectural features such as transparent glazing, weather protection (such as canopies), signage and other architectural features that distinguish it as the principal building entrance;

ii) provide a safe and convenient pedestrian walkway from the public sidewalk on Gainsborough Road and the public sidewalk on the future Coronation Drive extension to the principal building entrance(s);

iii) consider locating the entrance(s) to the underground parking on the east and/or west elevations of the building as opposed to the north elevation to allow space for a central pedestrian access closer to the public street, to allow for more active uses on the front of the building, and to not have the parking garage entrance be the view terminus for the main access into site;

iv) consider providing individual unit entrances for the ground floor units along the ‘service road’ and include individual walkway access from each unit to the sidewalk along this street;

v) consider designing the proposed ‘service road’ to include pedestrian amenities such as landscaping, street furniture, human-scale lighting and sidewalks on both sides of the street;

vi) ensure that rooftop mechanical penthouses and equipment should be screened from view and/or incorporated into the overall building design;

vii) provide easily accessible temporary bicycle parking facilities on-site;

viii) confirm the location(s) of garbage pick-up and/or loading areas and ensure they are screened from view from public streets and/or pedestrian connections;

ix) provide fully dimensioned site plan and elevations for all sides of the proposed buildings;

x) landscaping to include at minimum 50% native species, with no invasive species planted;

xi) achieve a LEED certification or similar green standard; and,

xii) include a minimum of 5% EV charging spots (Mix of Level 1 and 2);

it being pointed out that the following individuals made verbal presentations at the public participation meeting held in conjunction with these matters:

  • H. Froussios, Zelinka Priamo Ltd.; and,

  • M. Al Ashkar, Highland Communities;

it being further noted that the Municipal Council approves this application for the following reasons:

  • the application is consistent with the Provincial Policy Statement; and,

  • the application is consistent with the neighbourhood character, with the appropriate holding provisions for servicing and easement requirements;

it being further noted that the applicant verbally indicated that in lieu of affordable housing units at 80% of AMR, a financial contribution of $300,000 will be made toward Council’s Roadmap to 3000 and Whole of Community Response at completion of the Site Plan Approval process; it being noted that detailed information will be provided by the applicant prior to Council’s final approval;

it being acknowledged that any and all oral and written submissions from the public, related to this application have been, on balance, taken into consideration by Council as part of its deliberations and final decision regarding these matters.  (2023-D04)

Motion Passed (4 to 1)

Additional Votes:

Moved by S. Franke

Seconded by S. Lewis

Motion to open the public participation meeting.

Motion Passed (5 to 0)

Moved by S. Lewis

Seconded by A. Hopkins

Motion to close the public participation meeting.

Motion Passed (5 to 0)

3.6   200 Albert Street (Z-9561)

2023-11-13 Staff Report - (3.6) 200 Albert Street (Z-9561)

Moved by S. Franke

Seconded by S. Lewis

That, on the recommendation of the Director, Planning and Development, the following actions be taken with respect to the application by 200 Albert London Incorporated, relating to the property located at 200 Albert Street:

a) the proposed by-law appended to the staff report dated November 13, 2023 as Appendix “A” BE INTRODUCED at the Municipal Council meeting to be held on November 28, 2023 to amend Zoning By-law No. Z.-1, (in conformity with the Official Plan for the City of London, 2016), to change the zoning of the subject property FROM a Residential R10/Office Conversion/Temporary (R10-3*H24/OC7/T-70) Zone TO a Residential R10 Special Provision (R10-3(_)*H56) Zone;

b)    the Site Plan Approval Authority BE REQUESTED to consider the following design issues through the site plan process:

i) provide a minimum transparent glazing on the lobby/vestibule of 50% abutting Albert Street;

ii) consider changes to the building design above the 7th storey to reduce the building width (north-south); 

iii) provide a taller ground floor height to benefit the site from a streetscape activation perspective; 

iv) incorporate alternative landscaping design to ensure adequate tree and vegetative plantings above the parking garage; 

v) consider revisions to the layby to ensure safe and efficient vehicle movements; and,

vi) seek opportunities to provide additional step backs along all lot lines above the 3rd and 6th floor;

vii) Landscaping to include at minimum 50% native species, with no invasive species planted;

viii) Include a minimum of 5% EV charging spots;

ix) Ensure the building is built to a minimum of Bronze LEED certification or similar green building standard;

x) Ensure that at least 50% of the rooftop is green roof or solar; and,

xi) Bird friendly design incorporated (lights point down and 90% of all glazing 5 storeys and below treated);

it being pointed out that the following individuals made verbal presentations at the public participation meeting held in conjunction with these matters:

  • D. Galbraith;

  • M. Villemaire; and,

  • A.M. Valastro;

it being further noted that the Municipal Council approves this application for the following reasons:

  • the recommended amendments are consistent with the Provincial Policy Statement, 2020;

  • the recommended amendment to Zoning By-law Z.-1 conforms to the in-force policies of The London Plan, including, but not limited to the Rapid Transit Corridor Place Type, City Building and Design, Our Tools, and all other applicable policies in The London Plan; and,

  • the recommended amendment facilitates the development of a site within the Primary Transit Area and Built-Area Boundary with an appropriate form of infill development;

it being acknowledged that any and all oral and written submissions from the public, related to this application have been, on balance, taken into consideration by Council as part of its deliberations and final decision regarding these matters. (2023-D04)

Motion Passed (5 to 0)

Additional Votes:

Moved by A. Hopkins

Seconded by S. Lewis

Motion to open the public participation meeting.

Motion Passed (5 to 0)

Moved by A. Hopkins

Seconded by S. Lewis

Motion to close the public participation meeting.

Motion Passed (5 to 0)

4.   Items for Direction

None

5.   Deferred Matters/Additional Business

2023-11-13 PEC Deffered Matters List

5.1   Deferred Matters List

2023-11-13 PEC Deffered Matters List(1)

Moved by A. Hopkins

Seconded by S. Lewis

Motion to receive clauses 5.1 and 5.2

Motion Passed (5 to 0)

Moved by A. Hopkins

Seconded by S. Lewis

That the Committee Clerk BE DIRECTED to update the Deferred Matters List to remove any items that have been addressed by the Civic Administration.  (2023-D09)

Motion Passed (5 to 0)

5.2   (ADDED) 12th Report of the Community Advisory Committee on Planning

2023-11-08 CACP Report 12

Moved by A. Hopkins

Seconded by S. Lewis

That the 12th Report of the Community Advisory Committee on Planning, from its meeting held on November 8, 2023 BE RECEIVED for information.

Motion Passed (5 to 0)

6.   (ADDED) Confidential (Enclosed for Members Only)

Moved by A. Hopkins

Seconded by S. Franke

That the Planning and Environment Committee convene, in Closed Session, for the purpose of considering the following:

A matter pertaining to advice that is subject to solicitor-client privilege, including communications necessary for that purpose from the solicitor and officers and employees of the Corporation; the subject matter pertains to litigation or potential litigation with respect to appeals related to 2005 Kilally Road at the Ontario Land Tribunal (“OLT”), and for the purpose of providing instructions and directions to officers and employees of the Corporation.

Motion Passed (5 to 0)

The Planning and Environment Committee convened, in Closed Session, from 6:00 PM to 6:08 PM.

7.   Adjournment

The meeting adjourned at 6:11 PM.

Full Transcript

Transcript provided by Lillian Skinner’s London Council Archive. Note: This is an automated speech-to-text transcript and may contain errors. Speaker names are not identified.

View full transcript (2 hours, 6 minutes)

It’s 401, I’d like to call the 18th meeting, meeting of the planning environment committee to order. Please check the city website for additional meeting detail information. Meetings can be viewed via live streaming on YouTube and the city website. The city of London is situated on the traditional lands of Anishnabek, Haudenosaunee, Lenapeiwaq, and Adawahran.

We honor and respect the history, languages, and culture of the diverse indigenous people who call this territory home. The city of London is currently home to many First Nations, Métis, and Inuit today. As representatives of the people of the city of London, we are grateful to have the opportunity to work and live in this territory. The city of London is committed to making every effort to provide alternate formats and communication supports for meetings upon request.

To make a request specific to this meeting, please contact hackpec@london.ca or 519-661-2489, extension 2425. This time, I’ll ask for any disclosures of pecuniary interest. Seeing none, let’s move to the consent items. We have two, look for anyone that would like to have any pulled, a motion to move them.

Councillor Hopkins, seconded by Deputy Mayor Lewis, and I’ll open the floor for any questions, comments, et cetera, before I call the vote. Councillor Hopkins. Yeah, thank you, Mr. Chair.

I just wanna throw you to staff, thanks, staff, or the report, it doesn’t go unread and really appreciate the information. So thank you. Any other comments or questions from committee members, Councillor Frank. Thank you, yes, I want to echo Councillor Hopkins’ comments as well.

I appreciate seeing just the volume, the sheer volume that’s being processed at the Heritage Department without having to council. So appreciate that information. I also had a couple of questions for the Brownfield CIP. So I’m happy to support it.

I did have some more questions more regarding to the concept of Brownfield CIPs in general. I know we approve the CIPs to come back to us later on for another look, but I am wondering, the more I thought about it over the weekend, it does seem interesting that we have places in the city like gas stations or other industrial lands that have hazardous waste materials on them. And then when the person closes up shop, they leave behind a site that it has to be remedied by the next person. In this case, if we have Brownfield CIPs, we are taking some taxpayer dollars through different mechanisms to essentially clean that spot.

It reminds me a lot of orphaned oil wells on the prairies where we have the taxpayer paying to clean up after a heavy industry or a gas station remains there. So I guess my question is, long term, as we imagine more and more gas stations to be shutting down because we’re switching from gas to electric, do we have a plan in place or are we thinking that far ahead as to what are we gonna do? ‘Cause I can’t imagine if we had five a year, let’s say that we had to clean up. I don’t personally think it should be the taxpayer cleaning up.

I think it should be the person that caused the destruction. So that’s a long-winded question of asking if we’re starting to think about these things. I’ll go to Mr. Mathers on that question.

Through the chair, absolutely, this is a problem. And one of the reasons why we created the Brownfield CIP, it’s not something that we can control what’s happening on some of these private sites. We are fairly limited as far as what gas stations can do and when they can develop. However, we do have our rethink zoning work that we’re doing.

So in actually allowing for some of these sites to have that potential to change over, especially when you’re moving to electric in the future and knowing that there is a potential on those sites, just trying to make sure that the owners of those sites understand that there is a potential and ideally try to take the best practices available. And then when they do decide to turn over and for those sites that do want to redevelop, we do have the CIP available. Of course, this is not the ideal plan but it’s something that we have that’s available. We can allow for growth to happen and then we also have a really good understanding as far as what we can do to try to promote development on these sites through our rezoning approaches as well.

So those are the two main components that we have of allowing for these sites in the future and have you taken any other questions? That’ll sort. Yes, please, we’d love to follow up. So I know we collect securities for other sites and I’m not sure off the top of my head of what those are, what we collect them for but I know we’ve thrown the word around securities.

So I’m wondering what are we able to collect securities for in the city and could we in the future start collecting securities for things like gas stations or chemical or hazardous industry in order to at the end, if they don’t remediate the land, we would then have funding from the person that caused the issue to then remediate the land. Mr. Mathers. Through the chair, so I’ll answer the first piece of the question and then I’ll throw the rest off to legal folks to maybe if they’ve got some, can provide some details on other legislation.

So when we take security, it’s to ensure that the development proceeds as it was anticipated. So say for example, if we have a subdivision, we would take security to ensure that all of the, the sewers are constructed or the roads are complete so that if we have people that have started to move into that site, that we have funding that we can draw on to close it off in case somebody goes bankrupt during that first part of the development process. As far as having long-term security for another, for a site that it’s not something that I’m aware of that we have, have that legal basis for, but happy to throw off to legal here if they have any other comments. Would legal like to weigh in here on this question?

Through the chair. With respect to securities, typically, there’ll want to be some sort of agreement in place or some form of legislation that deals with agreements that permit the taking of securities. So when it comes to long-term plans, we’ll typically want to have some sort of development application that would provide for the ability to take securities in most places. We could investigate further, but that’s typically how we would approach the issue.

Councillor. Thank you. So then if I’m understanding that correctly, we could, if for any new, I imagine, gas station or any new facility that might have some sort of hazardous impact on the land. Moving forward, could we create that type of agreement where we would have a security based on them potentially not cleaning up at the end of their tenureship on that property?

I’ll go to staff. Through the chair, depending on the development application, there does have to be a line turned to the specific provisions of the Planning Act that relate to that, to the considerations that might come into play with respect to the approval. So if it was a site plan, there would be certain considerations that would be applicable towards an approval for site plan that could be contemplated within an agreement. So it would be something that would have to investigate further, but it may be difficult to attach those planning approvals to that type of long-term use and hold subsequent owners responsible for that use.

Councillor. Thank you. Okay, perhaps I might set the meeting with staff ‘cause this has me intrigued at the possibility to move forward on that, given that we probably have to look through and see if there’s some federal provincial policies that would allow us to tie it to it, but so appreciate all of that discussion. And then my last question was just in regards to having the CIPs coming back, and I know we have you guys looking at them for affordable housing contingencies, and we do know that this location already has committed to affordable housing units, but I just wanted to check in and see if when you guys are planning to come back with that, if Brownfield, if we would be able to attach that funding as well, given that it seems that we see the Brownfield CIPs after we already approve the zoning.

I’ll go to staff on that question. Through the chair, so the Q4 of 2024 is a timing for the review of the Brownfield work and then also affordable housing, so they do very much align as far as timing of bringing it forward. Councillor. I look forward to it, thank you.

There are questions on the consent items. The committee will allow me, I’d like to just pursue with legal just a little bit further on the questions raised by the Councillor. If a gas station’s owned, let’s say by Petrocat or Shell, and they stop operating as a gas station and they take away their pumps, et cetera, do we have any legal recourse for them to clean up the grounds underneath that site? Through the chair, the province regulates the cleanup of site, so if there was an order made with respect to that, and that would typically deal with on the regulation of a cleanup site, if there was some environmental issues that’s typically jurisdiction for the province to deal with, then it’s a liability that can float a subsequent owners of the land as well.

So essentially what you’re telling me is that this is a preferential matter, not a city matter? Through the chair, the province is typically the primary regulator of this type of behavior. Would that happen upon, does the city initiate that investigation, or is that, like, how would the province find out about a corner in London, Ontario, our gas station stops to operate? The reason I ask is that for the city to cover the cost of contamination on a, you know, a private enterprise, I know there’s something that rubs me the wrong way about it.

So I just wanted to know, how can we get in front of this, so we don’t, like, CIPs are needed across the city for many things, and how do we protect the taxpayer from paying the clean up costs of private operation? Through the chair, just so everyone’s aware of how the CIP program works as well. So it is funded from the tax base, and it’s a portion of the development charges fees. So that’s, it’s 50% of those fees.

That amount is what goes to be able to provide for the clean up or any kind of cost related to that. So it’s not an open-ended deal that folks can get it is. We, it’s something that we monitor, we ensure that we have the funding available for it, so it will cover up portion of this cost, it won’t necessarily even cover all the costs, but it is just, it’s supposed to be providing for at least a little bit of an enticement to redevelop these sites, otherwise they may not redevelop at all, and then we would both lose any kind of future income from the property as it being a tax paying property and any kind of opportunity for development. So that was the rationale that was brought forward in that original CIP as far as why we justified it.

If there’s anything else that legal would like to add, I’ll flip it back to them. Okay, along with the council it’s something that I think I’ll be following up off committee’s time. Thank you. Any other comments or questions before I call the vote?

Okay, we have received the consent items, moved in second and so I’ll call that vote. Closing the vote, the motion carries five to zero. Thank you, moving on to scheduled items. First, I am 3.1 regarding 6019 Hamlin Street.

I’ll look for a motion to open the public participation meeting, Councillor Hopkins, seconded by Councillor Frank and I’ll call the vote. Closing the vote, the motion carries five to zero. Any questions, technical nature, my committee or visiting Councillor at this time, and I’ll look for, to see if the applicant is here, would like to address the committee. Please give us your name and you have five minutes.

Thank you. Good afternoon, my name is Alexandra Hassan and I’m here with you on behalf of the applicant and owner of the land, Sifton properties. We have reviewed staff’s report and we are in favor of the recommendation to amend the special provisions of the existing R8-4 and R7 zoning to support the proposed development. I would like to take a moment to thank staff for the positive recommendation and members of committee for their time and consideration of the application this evening.

Thank you and I am available for questions. Thank you. Any members of the public that would like to address the committee today, seeing none in the gallery, I’ll ask the clerk or is there anyone online? Through the chair, there’s no one on Zoom.

I’ll look for a motion to close the BPM, Councillor Frank, seconded, Deputy Mayor Lewis, I’ll call the vote. Those in the vote, the motion carries five to zero. Thank you. I’ll put the item on the floor, Deputy Mayor Lewis.

Thank you, Chair. I’m prepared to move the staff recommendation. Thank you. Can I get a seconder?

Councillor Hopkins, the motion moved and seconded. Any comments or discussion? Councillor Frank. Thank you.

Yes, two quick questions. I’m wondering, I noticed that there is a request for 25% landscaped open space instead of the 30%. I’m just wondering what we are losing the 5% too. Go to staff on that.

So regarding landscape open space planning, planning staff is comfortable with reduction and the minimum percentage of required landscape open space. So this decision is based on the sufficient park and open space is proposed within the subdivision. Parkland dedication has been satisfied through the subdivision process, including three parkland blocks and three open space blocks. Councillor.

Thank you. So just to reiterate, we’re satisfied because it’s part of a greater subdivision application in the rest of it as some green space area. Staff. To you, Chair.

Yes. Councillor. Perfect, thank you. And my follow up was just, I noticed that there’s no secured bike parking or public bike parking.

And I’m just wondering given the size of the building and that it is six stories, if those two items are both the private interior and then the public exterior, if that’s being considered at site plan or if staff had discussions with the applicant on that. Go staff. Through you, Chair. So the applicant hasn’t proposed any bicycle parking as they do not have a specific development proposed.

It is just a concept for now. The site will be going through the site plan application process at which time details of the site plan would be finalized. And we can also incorporate this comment and also flag the comment for the site plan team. Councillor.

Thank you. Would it help to have the standard boilerplate that we’ve been using the last couple of months included on the official proposal for site plan direction? Staff. Through the chair, the requirements of the site plan control by-law trigger interior bike parking and short-term parking as well.

So I think it would be satisfied through both the regs of the zoning by-law and the site plan control by-law. Councillor. Thank you. Then I will leave it in your capable hands.

Councillor Hawkins. Thank you, Mr. Chair. And thank you, Councillor, for your questions too.

I am really pleased to see this come forward. I know it’s a subdivision that has been in the making. This is for basically two changes to allow the two six stories to be built right at that corner of Hamlin and Wonderland and increasing the density from 75 to 100 and also allowing for those reduced setbacks. So it’s good to see this come forward.

I want to thank the applicant too for working with upper Thames Conservation Authority. On this, there’s a lot of sensitive area and how we develop this particular subdivision. I really appreciate the extra due diligence to develop in an environmentally sensitive area. So very supportive of this going forward to me.

It’s that missing middle, getting these buildings in are really important. I really do think it’s important as well to have that connectivity of those sidewalks on Hamlin. I brought it up in the past. I’m going to bring it up again as we try to encourage people not only to bike but also or to walk that pedestrian traffic to our shopping areas that are close by is important.

So good to see this coming forward. Thank you. Other comments or questions? Committee members are visiting Councilor Pribble and or Councilor Raman are two visiting Councilors today.

Thank you for joining us. Okay, we have motion moved and seconded. I’ll call the vote. Closing the vote, the motion carries five to zero.

Moving on to 3.2. This is regarding 187 Warren Cliff Road North. I’ll look for a motion to open the public participation meeting Councilor Hopped and seconded by Councilor Frank and I’ll call the vote. Closing the vote, the motion carries five to zero.

Any questions of a technical nature for staff from committee members moving on if the applicant would like to address the committee? Now is your time? I don’t see the applicant in the gallery. I’ll ask the clerk if they are on Zoom.

Tour, are you on the call? Yes, good evening. Can you hear me? Please give us your name and you have five minutes.

Thank you, Councillor. My name is tour Dingman. I am the agent for the owner, Radak Kuzneki. The nature of the application is stems from a substandard foundation condition which has impossible to remediate and the building really has no future except to be removed.

We have a sealed engineers report to that state. As a result, we have designed a replacement building that meets the Black Friars, Petersville Heritage Conservation District plan. And as a result, our application is to remove the building and construct a replacement building as indicated in the report. We are pleased with the support from staff.

We have read the conditions of the report and accept those conditions. And I think that concludes my comments. The owner may be on Zoom. I’m not sure if she is though.

Perhaps the clerk can confirm if Radak is available. The clerk has indicated that she is not. So thank you very much for that. I look for anyone from the public that would like to address the committee in the gallery.

I don’t see anyone rushing to the mic. So I’ll look ask the clerk if there’s anyone online that would like to speak. Through the chair, there’s no one online. Okay, seeing that we’ve exhausted those who wish to address the committee, I look for motion to close the PPM, Councillor Hopkins, seconded by Deputy Mayor Lewis, I’ll call the vote.

Closing the vote, the motion carries five to zero. Thank you. I will now put the item on the floor for our committee members. Councillor Frank.

Thank you, I’ll make a motion to support these staff recommendation. Thank you, can I get a seconder please? Deputy Mayor Lewis seconds. Look for comments or questions before I call the vote.

We have a motion moved and seconded, I’ll call the vote. Closing the vote, the motion carries five to zero. Moving on to 3.3, this is regarding 607 Queens Avenue. I’ll look for motion to open the public participation meeting.

Councillor Hopkins, seconded by Councillor Frank. I’ll call the vote. Closing the vote, the motion carries five to zero. Thank you, any technical questions from staff or from committee members for staff?

Seeing none, I’ll look for the applicant would like to address the committee. See anyone in the gallery? I’ll ask the clerk if there’s anyone online. Hi, Laura.

Good afternoon, how are you? Ms. Jameson, though, please give us your name and you have five minutes. Thank you very much, Mr.

Chair. Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Laura Jameson. I am a planner with Zalenka Preamo Limited.

We are the authorized agents for the applicant proposing a new mixed-use development at 607 Queens Avenue. The development, as you are aware, is to permit a dine-in and take-out service restaurant on the ground floor of an existing building and to permit a residential unit above. The site-specific zoning provisions outlined in our request seek to recognize the existing conditions of the site as no physical exterior development is proposed. We’ve had the opportunity to review staff’s report and appreciate the positive recommendation.

We like to thank staff for their work on this project today as well. And that concludes my comments. If you have any questions, I’m available to answer them. Thank you.

Thank you. Is there anyone from the public that would like to address the committee today? Seeing none in the gallery, I’ll look for Clerk to check Zoom. Through the chair, there’s no one online.

Thank you. Then I’ll look for a motion to close the PPM. Councillor Frank, seconded by Councillor Hopkins and I’ll call the vote. Closing the vote, the motion carries five to zero.

I’ll put this item on the floor for committee members. Councillor Frank. Thank you. In addition to support the staff recommendation, but I do want to say only because I’m grandfathering in the open space and parking area coverage, ‘cause usually I wouldn’t support that on a new application.

Noted, kind of a seconder, Deputy Mayor Lewis. Do I need to have anything noted from the seconder? No, okay. Councillor Hopkins.

Hello from the third. Happy to support this. It’s an underutilized space, so it’s good to see something happening here. And really appreciate recommendations coming regarding the site plan in B.

I think it’s really important that we start noting these things, so thank you for that. Thank you. Any other comments or questions? The committee will allow me, I think this is great.

Traffic to see a commercial enterprise come into this area of town to support all these village and the residents’ residential neighborhood in that area. One more step to revitalizing this area, so I want to commend those that are involved. There’s no other comments or questions that I’ll call the vote. Closing the vote, the motion carries five to zero.

Moving on to 3.4 regarding 1990 Commissioners Road East and 2767 Doyle Drive. I’ll look for motion to open the public participation meeting. Councillor Frank, seconded by Deputy Mayor Lewis. I’ll call the vote.

Closing the vote, the motion carries five to zero. Thank you. Any questions of a technical nature for our staff? Seeing none, the applicant would like to address the committee.

Now is your chance. Thank you, Mr. Chair. My name is Nick Dijak.

I’m a Planner with Strik Paul 911, as representing the owner and applicant today, which is Lux Holmes. Before you is an app patient for zoning battle, managed for proposing to develop the site, which is a rural site that’s been predominantly surrounded by single-family homes. So it’s kind of the rounding out of the community for stacked town housing, which would be three buildings, 24 units each for 12, 72 units. The buildings would be lined around the periphery and oriented toward Commissioners Road with a relatively large amenity space in the center and parking hidden from the street, so to say, in landscape coordinating.

We reviewed the Council of Staff Support Technologies. Don’t have any issues with the comments. There are a few suggestions that were requested to be carried forward into the site plan approval process, which we are open to considering. It is a fairly unique site in terms of grading and it has its own challenges.

So we’ll continue working with staff. We’ve been very understanding of the development potential of the site and working with them to get it built and constructed. Yeah, we’ll be for any available or any questions and hopefully you approve, thanks. Thank you.

Look for any members of the public that would like to address the committee. Please, sir, give us your name and you have five minutes. My name is Angus Johnson, through you, Chair, I have a map that I would like to give to Council to sort of compliment and support my comments if that’s possible. I suppose I could do it afterwards.

That’s five minutes so you can please enlighten us. Thank you. I want to talk about tree removal at 1990 commissioners. The Rain and Meq Index map gives us a snapshot of the state of emissions in London.

It shows the price and amounts of emissions we’re paying in areas of the city with a high ratio of pavement and infrastructure to vegetation. On the map that I’ll be giving you, you’ll see the location of this proposed development is shown with a red X in the green zone of the EQ Index map. This lot at the moment, except for one building is a green space covered with grass and trees, both of which are continuing to contributing to GHG emission removal in the area. The 22 mature trees are contributing something approximately 1100 pounds of greenhouse gas emissions removal annually.

If these trees are removed and replaced with saplings, it’ll be 25 to 30 years before they’re contributing that kind of emission rate. There are no other trees in this neighborhood on this side of commissioners road of this maturity. It is a relatively new neighborhood of single detached homes with surrounding yards and small trees and bushes. The fact that this area is very close to the Thames River, which is a large border of trees on the south side is contributing significantly to emissions level here.

On the 1990 commissioners, these property, these trees are spread over the west middle part of the property. They could have been incorporated into a green space commons area for the property. It would not have been that difficult to do. Maybe some parking spaces would need to be sacrificed, which currently is set at 1.5 cars per unit.

And it would have maybe required the amenity area being moved from where it’s currently located and closed in the middle of buildings. But to keep the trees, it should be worth it. Those trees could greatly enhance the aesthetics of this property, which will initially be of an enclosed mass of brick walls and pavement virtually filling the space to its edges. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Johnson. Any other comments for the committee members from the public? Seeing none in the gallery, I’ll ask Clerk if there’s anyone online.

Through the chair, there’s no one online. Thank you. No other folks would like to address us then I’ll look for a motion to close the PPM. Deputy Mayor Lewis, seconded by Councillor Frank and I’ll call the motion.

I’ll close in the vote. The motion carries five to zero. Thank you. I’ll put this item on the floor for committee members.

Councillor Hopkins. I’d like to move the motion. Thank you. I look for a seconder.

Deputy Mayor Lewis, we have motion moved in second. I’ll go to Councillor Hopkins. Yeah, thank you, Mr. Chair.

And I want to thank the community for coming out. I made a few comments on the previous recommendation, which really were for this recommendation. It is an underutilized site. How we do infill and development is always a challenge, especially when it comes to protecting our trees.

And that’s why I am supportive of B with a number of requested suggestions through the site plan process in particular. I, which is the additional tree plantings will be required to compensate for the loss of trees. My question through you, Chair, is really around how we go forward with the planting of these trees and how they will be looked at going through the site plan. If you could give a better, a broader process on how we go forward and mitigate protecting the trees that we have, but also how we do the planting.

Going forward. We’ll go to staff. Thank you through the chair. I’ll speak in general because we don’t have a site plan application before us, but effectively in a site plan, you would receive a tree preservation plan for any of the trees that are looking to be retained.

We’d be looking at that from a professional lens with our professional staff in house and looking to see if there’s any other trees that could be saved. Of course, we look at things like recommendations from their staff, whether they’re hazard trees or in the way of the approved development. So there’s some view on that from a staff perspective through the site plan process. In terms of plantings, the by-law is rather vague in terms of replacement trees.

There is some policy on unplanned, but not quite enforced through any sort of regulations at this time. So we look for buffering plantings at a certain rate, whether it’s one for 12 or one for 15 meters along the perimeter of the site. There is some direction to the approval authority in this case as well. So which does look for additional planting above and beyond the site plan process.

So with respect to the plant, the trees that go in, they are smaller sized trees, just given the nature of development and ensuring that they can do well in the situation that they’re provided in. So larger trees from our understanding typically don’t do as well in some of these situations, just given a number of reasons. So that’s the general site plan process in terms of tree planting retention and a bit of a nutshell. Councilor.

Thank you for that. I think we see this quite often, especially in infills, a lot of trees coming down and how do we compensate. And I think maybe we can do a better job here moving forward when it comes not only to what is replaced with the trees, obviously we do more native tree replacements now, but how the soil, what kind of soil goes gets put in when we do tree planting. So I just wanted to make those comments, I think it comes up quite often when we see a lot of trees being removed and then the compensation and really don’t know where that’s gonna go out, going forward, but hope to see.

We can make some changes. Thank you. Any other comments or questions, Councilor Frank? Thank you, yes.

I’d love to make two friendly amendments that the Clark already has an E scribe. If folks just wanna look at it, I hope they’re friendly, but we can see if they’re not, then I will do what needs to be done to add them. But the first one would just be landscaping to include a minimum 50% native species with no invasive species planted. And the second being including a minimum of 5% e-b charging spots.

So we’d love to be able to add that on to the SBA direction. Okay, I’ll ask the mover and seconder if they’re okay with the amendments proposed by Councilor Frank. Yeah, I’d just like to read it before. Okay, you can, if you read.

It’s on the E scribe right now. And the changes are in bold, Councilor Frank. Thank you. And if I may, what people are reading, could I comment on the application?

Please go ahead. Okay, thank you. I also want to echo, I appreciate the efforts that the applicants made to improve the tree plantings post development. So echoing what Councilor Hopkins says, as well as, I do find the design, I’m not a designer, but I think it looks cool.

So I appreciate the urban design efforts that were made on this site as well. Thank you. We’re just having, I want to make sure the committee members can find Council, are you able to find the amendment? Okay.

So are you okay, Deputy Mayor Lewis with supporting the amendment? Councilor Hopkins is okay. So friendly amendment is on the motion that’s been moved and seconded. I’ll open the floor for a discussion.

Okay, Deputy Mayor Lewis. Yeah, I just want to take a brief moment. I’ll probably say this again on the next application, but I think that when it comes to asking builders to not plant invasive species and to focus on native species as much as possible, I think that’s a win all the way around and really it’s a neutral cost sum for the developers. Landscaping has to be done.

So I really hope that we can get to a stage in the not too distant future where we just see this as a standard operating procedure for site plan authority. And the same with the EV charging spots. And I will say even if these are, you know, an agreement to rough in for future use as EV vehicles become more than norm, I’m okay with that too. And I look at what we’ve done at East Lions Community Center on a city project where we only have a couple of chargers right now, but where the groundwork is done so that in the future, we can add charging stations to the site without having to rip up the parking lot and add electrical and other components later.

The electric vehicle inventory is coming. People will be switching out their gasoline powered vehicles for these and I think in the long run, it’s better for our builders to be future proofing these sites now than have costly retrofits later. And I know that this won’t mean that there is a 5% EV charging spot in every development and I know this is a four consideration. So it’ll be discussion back and forth as site plan moves forward.

But I really encourage all of our development community large or small to think about how they’re gonna support this transition moving forward because we are seeing a significant investment from the federal and provincial government to ramp up production of both battery plants and production facilities here in Ontario and in the North American jurisdiction. So I do think it’s a smart move for us to be starting to think about how people who purchase or rent housing units in the future are going to be able to charge their vehicles if we have a plan for it. Any other comments or questions from committee members? Then if the committee will allow me, I have no problem with the amendments.

I think it’s terrific ideas and I think it’s in the interest, I’ll echo the deputy mayor’s comments there. I think it’s the, in the interests of the development community to really be thinking serious about this from their own future customers, those who might rent or buy into their properties because for sure there will be a demand there. So I’m perfectly happy to support that. So any other comments or questions?

Seeing none, and we have motion moved in second, I’ll call the vote. Closing the vote, the motion carries five to zero. Thank you. Moving on to 3.5 regarding 978 Gainesboro Road.

There is an added from Bluestone Properties in the updated agenda. I’ll look for motion to open the public participation meeting. Councilor Frank, seconded by Deputy Mayor Lewis, I’ll call the vote. Closing the vote, the motion carries five to zero.

Any questions of a technical nature from committee members that are visiting counselors? Seeing none, then I’ll move on to the applicant. Please give us your name, sir, and you have five minutes. Good afternoon, Mr.

Chair, members of the committee. My name is Harry Frucio, some with Zalinka Priemma Limited. We are the authorized agents for highland communities and here to speak on behalf of the application this afternoon. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. And I just wanted to start off by thanking staff for processing this application. We, unfortunately, we’re not here to agree with the recommendation.

We’ll get to that shortly, but that doesn’t take away from their efforts in bringing this application for consideration this evening. I want to make the most of my five minutes ‘cause there was obviously some items we have to discuss. And just to give you some brief background, we were back, we were here back in December, 2021, originally with a 20-story proposal, which was deferred to go back and consider a smaller building, a lower height building. Since that time, the London plan, the appeals were resolved and a site-specific policy was added to these lands to allow a certain height of 17 stories, which I’ll allude to shortly.

Since then, since that time, we’ve amended the application to where it is today being a 17-story application with a requested density of 370 units per hectare. Now, going with the, what we’d like to discuss with you is this site-specific policy, and I think fundamentally, that’s where we disagree with staff on how this policy has been implemented in its intent. The subject lands and 13 other properties were added to the HDR with site-specific policies to protect existing zoning permissions as part of settlement discussions. These were not contested at the OLT staff that agreed to these properties being included, and the site-specific policies actually were proposed by the app, the appellant, to ensure existing height and density permissions at minimum would be recognized for these sites.

And since the London plan deals almost exclusively with only height permissions, the intent of the site-specific policies was to ensure that the existing height permissions were grandfathered. The site-specific policies were not intended to lock in development permissions. Future applications would be considered for more height and more density, and that’s included in the text and policy 107(c). We acknowledge that the HDR policies do restrict densities outside the primary transit area to maximum of 150 units per hectare, but we’ve submitted an official plan amendment requesting to mend that site-specific policy, but we’re not asking for an increase in the approved height, just the density.

The 150 unit per hectare standard is an old standard that goes back to the days of the 1989 official plan, Mr. Chair. It was applied to all high density residential development outside of the downtown. As you’re all aware, approved developments recently within the neighborhood’s place type alone have exceeded 150 units per hectare for heights less than 17 stories, regardless of it’s in within the primary transit area or not.

For example, two doors down from us to the east, 954 Gainsborough Road. It’s in a neighborhood’s place type, not an HDR. It’s in an R97 zone that permits 276 units per hectare for a six-story building, two properties down to the west at 1018 Gainsborough Road. This site, again, not under the HDR, it’s in an R97 zone permitted to have 392 units per hectare for a 12-story apartment building along a shared laneway access as well.

So both of these sites are also outside of the primary transit area and yet have been approved for densities in excess of 150 units per hectare based on the neighborhood place type permissions. So in my opinion, a restriction of 150 units per hectare on high-rise developments is not consistent with current city housing needs and objectives and provincial direction to provide more housing for all populations. In this instance, servicing capacity is available for this development. There are no traffic concerns noted by staff and both matters will be dealt with through subsequent holding provisions that will be dealt with at the site plan approval stage should be successful in getting the rezoning approved.

And our client has been in discussion with and will continue to work with all the affected neighbors necessary to secure the necessary easements between the properties as well as work towards a fair and cost effective solution to provide servicing and access to all the affected properties along this corridor. And just in closing, I just wanted to provide you with some of the benefits of this proposed development should you see merit in going against the staff recommendation. And some of these benefits include parking being included underground or within the podium. There will be limited to no parking at grade for this property.

A amenity space will be provided at grade on the rooftop and within the building. Sufficient amenity space for all the residents. Sort of cherry picking from the last application, there will be AV charging stations provided within this development, whether they be ready or ready for future connections that will be considered as part of the site plan approval stage. There will be native plantings provided within this development as well.

High percentage of that will be included as part of the landscape provisions. And lastly, there will be a $300,000 cash contribution for affordable housing initiatives within the city based on the requested density and the uplift beyond 150 units per hectare. And that is based on the proposed density should it be considered for approval. Now, the options for funding are still being considered and but they do include the funds for change program that is administered by the London Community Foundation or to a specific local project by an established affordable housing provider and should— - 30 seconds.

Just in closing, Mr. Chair, should council or should committee decide that this is a project with merit? We will make sure that that option has been solidified before the next council meeting. So we asked that you consider this application based on the merits of in front of you in terms of what we’ve asked for the amendment and go against the staff recommendation.

Thank you. - Thank you. Are any other people that would like to address the committee in the gallery? So clerk, if there’s anyone else online?

Mohammed. - Please, sir. Give us your name and you have five minutes. Good afternoon, my name is Mohammed.

I’m presenting highland communities. And I would like to thank the members of the planning committee. And I would like to further continuous efforts and commitment to provide more units to the market and especially with commitment to get 47,000 units by 2031. I would also like to thank staff for the continuous meeting with us and trying to get resolve some of the matters that we were facing in the building.

So I would like to leave it at that. And I’m here if there’s any questions or concerns from whether public or council, I’ll be able to answer. Thank you, everyone. Thank you, sir.

Is there anyone else online, clerk? Through the chair, there’s no one. I’ll ask one more time if there’s anyone in the gallery like to address the committee. Seeing none, I look for a motion to close PPM.

Deputy Mayor Lewis, seconded by Councilor Hopkins. I’ll call the vote. Close in the vote. The motion carries five to zero.

Thank you. I’ll put this item on the floor now for committee members. Deputy Mayor Lewis. Thank you, chair.

And through you circulated to colleagues from our clerk, there was the alternate motion. And I believe Councilor Frank is prepared to second that we approve this application. I will note that since the circulation, there was an additional piece that reflects because it was not there in our original, but as colleagues are aware, there’s always the site plan authority for consideration. And so there are components of the site plan authority for consideration in there.

And those focus on the pedestrian walkway to the public sidewalk on Gainesboro, the entrances to the underground parking considerations, as well the reference in the last application, some minimum EV charging stations and landscaping at a minimum of 50% native species. So that is there for colleagues and the other addition. And I do apologize. I circulated it to the clerk rather late because we did have a contribution, but it is right there at the bottom on it being further noted that the applicant has verbally indicated that in lieu of affordable housing units at 80% of AMR, a financial contribution of 300,000 at the completion of site plan approval will be made toward Council’s roadmap to 3000 and the whole community response and that the applicant has committed to finalizing the details prior to Council’s final approval, which we just heard, which was communicated to us myself and Councilor Frank earlier this afternoon as they chatted with us about this.

So that it being further noted is in there as a placeholder so that it is noted for Council that that contribution and finalization is coming forward. So happy to put that alternate on the floor. And then after you’ve confirmed a seconder, I do have for you one question through to our staff. Okay, so I noticed that Councilor Frank has indicated that she will second.

So I will go back to you, Deputy Mayor. Thank you, Chair. And through you, we had a communication as you indicated that was on the added from Bluestone Properties. We also had a communication that was circulated through PPM at Clerks because it did not make the added agenda raising concerns about the site access.

But it is my understanding and Bluestone indicated to their in their communication, in fact, that there is, first of all, a holding provision on this recommendation to address that and that there is in fact an easement already in place on this location. So I just wonder through you, Chair, if staff can confirm the existing easement is in fact in place and that the holding provision is there to ensure access concerns are addressed in site plan. I’ll go to staff on the confirmations. Through the Chair, the easement is on those properties so that they can coordinate for a private access, for servicing, road access, and yeah, all of the servicing.

Deputy Mayor. And just confirming that they’ll be further addressed with the holding provisions through site plan. Staff, through the Chair, that’s correct. And then we’ll continue to collaborate with existing property owners in the nearby area where development proposals have come forward as well.

Deputy Mayor. Thank you, that’s it. I’ll look for other committee members. I’m Councillor Frank, then I’ll go to Councillor Hopkins.

Thank you, and just following up on the easement stuff, I was starting to get a little confused, so I’m just hoping staff could clarify. Are there historical easements on some of the other properties that are adjacent, that this property, once it gets approved, then they would also have like, they have an easement on their own property to get their servicing and their access point dealt with. But is there historical easement on an adjacent property? And how does that work when they originally applied?

Do they get an easement applied on it because there’s a landlocked parcel behind them? I’m just kind of confused about who’s getting what easement and when. I’ll go to staff. Three, Mr.

Chair, I just want the applicant to confirm, but I believe there’s an easement coming from Gainesboro down to the site. What they’re looking at now is an easement to the east through the Farhead lands, a development that was here at Planning Committee a couple months ago, and bringing the easement through for access to the south. So, you might want to, I just want to confirm the applicant, but I’m pretty sure that there’s that easement. Okay, I’ll go to the applicant to shed some further light for the council.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. And yes, there is an existing easement in favor of our clients lands at 978 through 990, which fronts on to Gainesboro for access and services. The other easements really relate to development according to the east and west to secure those easements in order to allow for services to occur along that private lane way.

And that’s what will be discussed during the next stages. And there are those discussions have already started. We just haven’t finalized anything because we haven’t really secured any approvals yet for this project. Thank you.

Councilor. Thank you, Sue, to follow up on that. So there’s already an easement on 990. So then whenever that location had their application, so I think they’re a medical center now, was that whenever the medical center was approved, they said, hey, this lane way in the future, you’re gonna have to share to this parcel of grass, which will future be developed.

I guess I’ve never seen that before, so I’m trying to understand how that works. I’ll go to stuff. Through the chair, so this property, the subject’s site in the lands of the north were one property. And so when it came in for their first rezoning, it was all one property.

Through the severance of the rear portion, that’s when the easement would have been put in place for access through the commercial site to the back. Councilor. Thank you. Okay, so I’m just following this paper trail then.

So that then was severed. The medical center on one, now we’ve got a potential permit building on another. And are these two sites? They’re both owned by different ones, but I guess it seems to me that the site that is the medical center is either unaware that there’s an easement on their lane way, or are they renting it?

And then there’s the owner is the person that is negotiating with this. I’m trying to understand because it doesn’t seem that the easement location that is currently proposed is copacetic with the current medical center. I’ll start with staff on this. Through the chair.

So I might ask for some clarification, but the easement is for access through the medical centers, supposed to be on an in-term basis until the future long-term access would be out to coronation from a private lane way shared. And then ultimately the servicing and access should be contributory to coronation for the property. I mean, the easement would be registered on title on the property to the north, but it may be a tenant that is unaware, but the property owner would be aware. Councilor.

Thank you. Okay, this is starting to make a little bit more sense. And I guess my last follow-up then is if the access is temporary from this location to Gainesboro and the future one is coronation, are then the people who are to the right of this location, are they aware that they’re gonna have to grant access through their lands to get to coronation? Good staff.

Through you, Mr. Chair. Yeah, there are discussions with them about that. Councilor.

Thank you, yes. I, as Councilor, Deputy Mayor, was identified. I am supportive of this and we’ve added a bunch of site plan amendments and also these easement and other holding provisions. I do find this one complicated.

I don’t know if it’s more complicated than usual or if I haven’t seen one like this in a year, but I would just like to thank the applicant and all the other landowners and staff for trying to figure out where the servicing and where the lane ways go ‘cause I’m finding it super complicated. So good luck in the long term with that if this gets approved. Well, I think the fact that four people had to answer your questions speaks to the complexity. So I think we’re all thankful for the questions.

Councillor Hopkins. Yeah, I too find this very confusing and maybe my question is a technical question, very similar to Councillor Frank’s and maybe I’ll ask it a different way. Holding provisions, do we need to put holding provisions in this amendment to allow for the access and for the sanitary above and beyond the holding provision number 17, which relates to servicing? Because I am confused in how all this is all going to work.

So maybe that’s the question. Do we need another holding provision to make sure that all these pieces work and align together? I’ll go to staff. Hi, this is Brent Lambert from Development Engineering here.

So in regards to the servicing, there’s an age 17 proposed for the site ‘cause essentially it’s landlocked from the available servicing on coronation drive. The adjacent properties and how they’re split is basically the north half of the properties are tributary to Gainesboro. In the south half of the properties are tributary to coronation drive. So in that’s all just due to topography, the site actually drops quite a bit from Gainesboro down to coronation.

So the south half of these properties need to be serviced from coronation. And through the holding provisions that we proposed, we’re encouraging them to work together to provide a solution where they all have access to that available sewer on coronation drive. Councilor. So I guess the age 17 is sufficient then, staff.

The age 17 would be sufficient for the subject site, but then we’ll need a holding provision, an additional holding provision that basically secures easement and access rights for the adjacent property through this property. Councilor. Can that be added then with this amendment? And if mover and the seconder would be open to an amendment to the amendment, I think that would be important that holding provision just to make sure it all works out.

Maybe I should through you go to staff on that. Yeah, I’ll go to staff for some guidance on that. I know where the council is going here. Just for some protection for future applicants, we gotta make sure we get this straight before we go forward.

Through you, Mr. Chair, we can, we recommended if council decides to move forward with this development and approve it, we did recommend in a report for holding provision to deal with this. So we can add that specific holding provision or you can put direction forward that we have that holding provision in there. Councilor.

And it’s a new holding provision. I’d like to bring that forward to add that holding provision. I don’t know what number it is or just to make it noted to allow for. Is there some wording that can be supplied for the clerk to suggest to the councilor?

Through you, Mr. Chair, it’s on page 210. Do you see that wording council? If you can give me the page number.

Page 210, while you’re looking at that councilor, I’ll just go to staff. There’s, I see a potential holding provision at the top which regards to servicing and easements and then kind of midway down access to roads. Looks like there’s two potentials for holding provisions, is that correct? Through you, Mr.

Chair. So if we were to recommend holding provisions, we would recommend the standard H, the H5 for public site plan, the H-17 for servicing, and then a new holding provision which is on page 210, which deals with not a suitable access to a local road can be obtained by the owners. The site is landlocked onto the satisfaction of the city. So you’re talking about three holding provisions.

Is that correct? H, H5 for holding provision. For holding provisions to be added, Councillor. So we have those three, so the added one then would be, like you said on page 10, the holding provision, which is the purpose, it’s in the middle of the page.

To ensure suitable access to a local road can be obtained by the owner at the site is landlocked and currently does not have any access to local roads. This holding provision shall not be deleted until access has been obtained all to the satisfaction of the city. And it’s just a H. Okay, so I’m gonna put it on the clerk’s shoulders right now to get those in so we can all take a look at Deputy Mayor Lewis.

Yeah, storage chair, but through you, I think we’re getting overly technical and complicated here. The draft recommendation to approve has an H5, an H11, an H17, and an H60 written into it. So there are four holding provisions already. I simply need the number of what the fifth one is supposed to be.

I’m happy to add it in, but I don’t need all the technical language around what it’s supposed to achieve. I understand that. I just need the number. Through you, Mr.

Chair. I’ll go to staff for help here. Through you, Mr. Chair, there is no number ‘cause it’s an additional new holding provision.

Deputy Mayor. So it’ll be given a number. Okay, so through you, and not that I’m trying to cross debate Ms. Riley, but we’ve been going through an exercise where we’re supposed to be reducing the number of holding provisions in general.

And now I’m hearing that we gotta create a new holding provision when I was under the understanding that the age 17 was accomplishing this. So, you know, I’m hesitant to get into adding new holding provisions that are specific to a single site. That’s how we got to the stage of having 200 and some different holding provisions listed a couple of years ago that we started to clean up. So I’m just looking for some clear direction on how we accomplish ensuring that the access easements are in place so that this application can be considered for moving forward.

So if it’s a new holding provision, like I don’t even know what number we’re applying or if we’re just providing a general H with a description. I’ll go to staff when you are ready to comment. Through the chair, so just to be clear again, we’re making a brand new holding provision for this development. That the issue is the age 17 is related to servicing, water, sewer, that kind of thing, with this holding provisions to deal with access and to ensure they can achieve the access to the east.

So as of now, properties landlocked, they don’t have frontage on any road and they can not get to the future coordination street. They need permission over lands to the east to achieve that connection. And that’s what the holding provision will ensure that this doesn’t go forward until they get the connection to the east. Yeah, so essentially, it’s landlocked.

Servicing us to get there, vehicle access or pedestrian, whatever, transportation access. Those are two major things, right? So what you’re saying, Mr. Corby, is that you’re working on one holding provision that covers both.

That’s not currently in the motion before us today. Through the chair, so the age 17 will deal with the servicing and the age. This new one will deal with the transportation access. Okay, Deputy Mayor.

So through you chair, and again, I’m not trying to dispute what staff are saying in terms of meeting the need here. What I’m perplexed by is this is not the first piece of landlocked property where development applications have come forward. So how do we not have a general holding provision for vehicular access for a site? In all of the holding provisions that we have in our policies and procedures, that we don’t have an age provision for vehicular access.

‘Cause this would not be the first time we’ve had a landlocked site for development. Through the chair, I would suggest this is rather rare. Even if we do have landlocked parcels, we don’t seek to create them. And generally, when we do create them, you’ll have a permanent easement created through that severance, or however it was created.

So I would say this is rather unique. Even we have over 200 holding provisions, and we don’t have one in place to take care of this. That’s why we proposed a new one. I’ll go to the Deputy Mayor, Councillor Robin.

I see your hand is up. I’m just wanna kind of finish this train of thought, and then I’ll go over there. The Deputy Mayor is— - Yes. So, you know, and now I’m just, you know, thinking aloud here as we kind of deal with this one.

And again, I have no problem putting in something that will address the needs for access to the site. That’s absolutely reasonable and fine, and should be done to make sure that that’s done properly. I guess where I’m seeing now is that perhaps we need, perhaps under item five, I will bring up under deferred matters and additional business tying back to this one, the need for the establishment of a general holding provision for access because we shouldn’t have a situation like this where we’re creating new holding provisions on the floor because we don’t have a general one for vehicular access when we do have one for service. So I will wait to address that in section five of our agenda.

If we can just get the language that we need to amend this, I’m happy to support it. Okay, I’ll go to Councillor Robin. Thank you and through you. I appreciate being able to ask some questions today at committee.

Can you hear me okay? We can hear you fine, yep. Perfect, thank you so much. So I have had a chance to review this application and speak with residents as well as the applicant and the representatives.

I wanna take the time to say thank you to them for spending a lot of time with me, addressing some of the questions I had and providing me with information. I also wanted to thank them for taking the time to engage in extra consultation that I had asked for them to participate with me at award meeting and elsewhere in order to engage with the community. I wanna say thank you to staff. I appreciate the fact that they’ve taken the opportunity to present a very clear summary of the reason for the refusal.

I think that in their submission, they’re addressing a lot of the concerns that I’m hearing from residents around this development. Some of those concerns are around that increased traffic congestion. And while I understand we’re talking about addressing how people get in and out through an easement, what we’re not addressing is some of the bigger cart before the horse issues that extend in this corridor. So separate from the application, but very important for the discussion that we’re having, we have now recently approved 954 and 990, and now we’re on 978 Gainesboro, all of which are pretty high density projects for the area.

So I’m wondering if staff wanna quickly comment on what they’re seeing or what their thoughts are around the increased traffic and congestion. I know a lot of people wrote in about that on Hyde Park in Fanshawe and how they think that will be addressed in their comments. They say, “Look, this isn’t a transit area.” And we are putting a lot of density there, and height. And I just wanted to get a sense from them about what their thoughts are on that.

I’ll go to staff on the council’s concerns. And desire to hear your comments. Through the chair, as far as traffic goes, there was a TIA traffic impact assessment provided with the original application, which was a bit of a lesser density of what is proposed in this one. That was acceptable to transportation staff as part of the future site plan.

If this rezoning is approved, we would ask for them to update that transportation impact assessment based on the current proposed density. Councilor. Thank you, would that be part of, or would the committee consider that as part of the motion? Well, that’s a question for, I guess, committee members.

Yeah, I’ll just put it out there and let them consider it for the future conversation as we continue. So one of the things that staff commented on, they said the proposal can be reasonably attended to incorporate a mix of building types that the densities contemplated in the specific area policy, which would better transition to nearby low rise areas. So I think that whole thing just means that from a form perspective, there is a way that this whole proposal can be done just from a different form. And I’m just wondering if staff want to comment on that at all.

I will go to staff through the chair. So we have policies in the London plan for the high density residential overlay, which is the policy section that is allowing for the increased height and density on this particular site based on the 1989 official plan. So within those policies for high density residential overlay, it suggests that sites that are designated within that not look to maximize the height that is permitted or the 17 stories in this case, but look to provide a mix of forms. So potentially a 17 story building with also some townhouses or some lower rise forms and not to maximize the density on the site for high density residential overlay.

So the recommendation would be to go forward with something that was a bit more mixed but fit within that height, Councilor. So just to follow up. So the density could stay the same. It’s just the form that’s the concern.

Go to staff. Through the chair, the staff recommendation was to maintain the existing special policy, which was 150 units per hectare. I don’t know for certain, but I wouldn’t suggest that the density proposed by the applicant would be able to be accommodated in a lower rise form. We haven’t seen a proposal that provides that.

Councilor. Thank you. So in order to achieve this density, the 17 story thinner tower that’s being proposed is the only configuration that we believed or that the applicant put forward in this iteration, I should say, ‘cause there have been other iterations of this. The applicant talked about amenity spaces.

I’m just wondering if we have more information about amenity spaces as well as outdoor space. I’ll go to the applicant. If you could, do you have some more details regarding amenities? Thank you, Mr.

Chair, and through you, yes. I mean, as I said in my presentation, there is going to be consideration for amenity space at grade in the building and on the rooftops. We haven’t gone to the level of technical detail that normally we get through through site plan approval, and that’s where we anticipate we’ll have discussions with staff if we get there. But we are meeting the minimum landscape, the open space requirement at grade.

We’ve had discussions to about what type of community space will be inside. Inside the building, you’re gonna have your workout rooms, you’re going to have your activity spaces. We haven’t programmed the outdoor space yet, but we are considering things like a little small dog park back there like you see in some of the more recent developments. Roof top amenity space again, that’ll be through more technical design at the site plan stage.

But those are all things that are part of this proposal. Councillor. Thank you. I just wanted to go back to some of the public comments on this application.

A lot of them are before this iteration of the plan. And I’m just wondering if you can help me understand if this, I think there was only about eight that were recent to this recent drawing or design story. I’m just wondering if all of those people that responded over the course of the many different applications are potentially people that can appeal because they wrote in at some point during the process. Well, that’s more of a legal question but who grounds for appeal and I’m not too sure.

I’ll go to legal on that. I’m not too sure if they want to comment on the appeal process from other than the city, I guess. So I’ll go to legal on that question. Through the chair, sorry, could you please repeat the question?

I think I believe the Councillor is asking that there are eight people who wrote letters in. Would they have grounds for appeal based on those letters that were, you know, their concerns were not addressed? Councillor, correct me if I’m wrong. Sorry, yeah.

So there’s a number of different responses to different plans as they had come forward over the years. So I’m just wondering if it’s particular to the current application or if anyone that subsequently had written in since earlier on is technically able to because I think a lot of people didn’t update their commentary from earlier on when this new design came forward. So I’m just wondering and I wanted to make sure that they’re aware of what their rights are with this application and their ability to appeal. I’ll go to legal on that question.

Through the chair, perhaps I can take that back and provide a response, I’d have to kind of want to confirm that to accurate. Okay, thank you. Councillor, if that’s okay with you, you’d have to do a little bit of research before giving an answer to that question. Thank you and that’s fine.

I’m happy to take that offline but would appreciate that answer to get back to constituents. I think overwhelmingly, you know, I’ve seen quite clearly for residents that they were looking for, they were looking for an update to this proposal and when it came back at 17 stories, there were some that were happy that it was no longer a 20 story building. But I do think that some of the questions around walkability, density, transit oriented, those things weren’t completely addressed for the community. And when I look at this proposal alongside some of the other applications that we have in the area, I do have to pause and wonder whether or not, again, separate from this application, whether or not this needs a bigger area wide approach because it is a lot of density all in one area, which when you look at it all together, I think there’s a lot of concerns.

So I just wanted to share that. I understand the committee’s going in a direction with the motion here, but I wanted to share that since I’ve only have not heard from any members of the committee about this particular application in my ward. Thank you, Councillor. Deputy Mayor Lewis.

Thank you, Chair, and through you, just a quick follow-up on these H provisions. So H110 purposes to ensure adequate provision of municipal services and access are provided and the H110 shall not be lifted until servicing and access are adequately addressed through the future planning applications and satisfaction of the general manager of planning and development. So would an H110, rather than an H17, not satisfy both requirements as it is specific to access? So it’s not just the provisional municipal services, it says municipal services and access.

So would we accomplish the intention of what we are trying to do here if we changed the H17 to an H110? I’ll go to staff with that question. Through you, Mr. Chair, yes, that could work.

Okay, well then, hearing that, appreciate that, thank you. So rather than amending it for a new holding provision, if Councillor Hopkins is amenable to changing her amendment to replace the H17 with an H110, I’d be supportive of that. Councillor? That works for me.

Okay, so I’ll go to the clerk. Clerk, do you, following what Deputy Mayor has suggested here and Councillor Hopkins has consented? Councillor Hopkins? Yeah, just some clarification for the clerk.

So do we take the holding 17 out and put the H110 in? Deputy Mayor, that’s my understanding, is can you confirm that? In clause B, the H17 R9 special provision would just change to an H110. So the clerk has removed H17 with the new replaced it with H110.

Okay, so it’s done in two spots and she’s highlighted that. So if you refresh your screen, you can see that and that’s under B, Councillor Fray. Thank you, yes. Just for a final review, I’d love to go to staff to make sure we have all the proper Hs.

I’ll go to staff to make sure that we’ve, I think you understand the intent coming from the committee if we’re covered with the holding provisions now before us. Through the chair, ideally, if we could have an H and that’s orderly development of lands and entering into an agreement, whether it’s a subdivision or a development agreement, that would tidy it up, bring everything together, because then it accounts for the blue stone lands that they’ve raised an issue here and that connection between all the property so that they all have that access to the easement. Okay, so I’ll go to the Deputy Mayor, are you good with that? Councillor Frank, you’re good with that.

So I’ll ask the clerk to also include that staff suggestion as well. Okay, the clerk has a few refresher screens. The clerk has essentially added Hs, just go to staff, is that to achieve what you are looking for? Through you, Mr.

Chair, yes, that does achieve it. You’ve got that H in there now, so that’s great. Okay, so we have the amendments in there. I believe the concerns of the committee for regarding access, both through service and transportation have been addressed, been moved and seconded.

Are any further comments or questions, concerns, from committee or visiting Councillors or Councillor Hopkins? Yeah, thank you, Mr. Chair. And I wanna thank the committee for making sure that we have sufficient holding provisions to allow for this lock land development to even occur.

I think they’re important to have in the amendment. And, but I won’t be supporting the amendment. And the reason is without getting into all the reasons, I think it’s the density and the concern that I have. I appreciate the work the war Councillor has done with the community.

I was listening very intently to what she was saying and I’m not really convinced that the community really understands that this form of density along with the rest of the density that is already being approved is gonna work in this community. I’m all for creating more units, but I do wanna sort of slow down a little bit and not just approve something and not really understand what is gonna go forward. It is a concern and if I’m not 100% feeling, this is great, I am going to pause a bit. And it’s such a large scale with the density in a landlocked area.

It just makes me feel that we can and should allow some form of development to happen. But, you know, we’ve had debates here at committee where on a bus rapid transit route, we still are, or close to a rapid transit route, we still don’t allow for this great amount of density. It’s great to have it downtown. I think this is where it should be, not out in the west part of the city where the access and just the landlocked opportunities for all, look at the amount of parking that’s gonna happen and occur in this intersection.

I’m very familiar with this intersection and how traffic moves around. It just makes me want to pause a little bit and rethink the density part so I won’t be supporting the amendment. The other comments or questions, Councilor Frank? Thank you, yes, and to follow that up, I do have a question for staff from Councillor Robbins comments that got me thinking, I am wondering at what point does this kind of density in a spot that probably was not planned for density?

Does it trigger more park amenities or community center or school, given that it was not originally planned to have this volume of people? I’ll go to staff. Through the chair, it’s a very good question because it wasn’t contemplated and certainly there may be more of a need in terms of those elements that create great cities and neighborhoods, but in terms of this, we were recommending refusal. So it’s not something that we were supportive of and we would have included as part of our review, recognizing that these are things that we would have to take back and work through with our parks folks and other areas.

We, right now we’re focusing on what we have available for this site and servicing access to the servicing access for surrounding lands. And as we mentioned about the onsite amenities, balconies, rooftop, that type of thing. So the larger perspective, it’s not contemplated. It was contemplated at 150 units per hectare.

Councillor. Thank you, yes. And I guess then a follow up for that is given that we potentially may be approving a lot of density in this area that was not planned. Is there any way and has there in the past were then council direct staff to procure a park close to an area?

Go to staff. Through the chair, that could be a council direction, but again, as land has already been planned for, potentially already developed, there may not be those opportunities left in, let’s say, in this neighborhood within the confines of, let’s say, the boundary roads, for example. Councillor. Thank you, yes.

Well, perhaps I’ll take this offline with Councillor Raman, but I’m very happy to see what’s possible in the area to add amenities that, given that we’re giving the volume, and there’s not a lot of amenities on the ground space for these applications. Happy to see if there is a way to procure a park space, whether through purchasing some underutilized parcel in this area or expropriating for a park. Potentially, I don’t know, we’ll have to ask legal, but I’ll take it offline and chat. Thank you.

Any other comments from committee or visiting Councillors prior to calling the vote? Kate, we have a motion that’s been moved and seconded. I’ll call the vote. Closing the vote, the motion carries 4-1.

Thank you, moving on to 3.6. This is regarding 200 Albert Street. I’ll look for a motion to open the public participation meeting. Councillor Hopkins, seconded by Deputy Mayor Lewis.

I’ll call the vote. So in the vote, the motion carries 5-0. Thank you, any questions of the technical nature for staff at this time? Seeing none, I’ll look for the applicant.

If the applicant would like to address the committee, please, sir, give us your name and you have five minutes. All right, good evening, Mr. Chair. My name is Dave Galbraith.

I’m a planner and president of up-consulting out of Waterloo here tonight on behalf of the applicant. And I’m joined by Mark Filmer from SRM Architects. So the subject property is 200 Albert Street, London. And as owning by law, amendment application has been advanced in order to permit or facilitate a 16-story building.

The site has a lot area of 0.35 hectares and frontage of 45 meters and is generally rectangular in nature. The subject property is currently used as a surface parking lot and is located to the northwest of Richmond and Albert Street, just north of downtown. To the east, the property is in close proximity to Victoria Park and Richmond Road. In terms of the existing planning controls, the London Plan designates the property as being within the rapid transit corridor place type, which encourages a mix of land uses, including apartment buildings.

Within this designation, a minimum of two stories is required up to 16 stories, which is being proposed by the applicant. The designation itself does not establish a maximum density or units per hectare. And the site itself is located within the downtown protected major transit station. In terms of the proposal itself, the applicant’s proposing a 16-story residential apartment building containing 325 total units.

23 of these units are studios, 247 as one bedrooms, 52 as two bedroom suites and three bedroom suites. A parking ratio of 0.37 spaces per unit is proposed or 121 parking spaces total. In addition to this, 363 bicycle parking stalls are proposed. A range of indoor and outdoor amenity spaces are also contemplated by the development, including that on the rooftop of the podium and at surface level.

I’ll hand things over to Mark now to talk about the architectural design. Thank you, Dave. Good evening, C staff, council members, members of the public. Thank you for the opportunity to present this project at 200 Albert Street.

My name is Mark Vilmer as Dave indicated. I’m a major part of SR Markitex. We worked on this project with a team of designers and architects. And it’s an interesting site because it’s an infill site where we only are relying on Albert Street as the access to the development.

And given the geometry of the site, we’ve had to be a little bit creative with site circulation. So as you know, it’s a 16-story building, roughly 325 units, 121 parking spaces through integrated structural parking deck below grade two levels. From a general massing perspective, the development’s designed to have proportions defined by a base, a middle, and an upper portion. And what’s most unique about the development for us, the design and pedestrian realm.

And what we have is a sits meter floor to floor, level one to level two, the project, where we introduced a mezzanine level. This has allowed us to provide the height that we need for vehicle access and loading, but it gives us a very unique opportunity for the amenity spaces, the main lobby area that’s interfacing with Albert Street, and mezzanine capabilities for the two-story or the one mezzanine level story townhouse units that we’ve arrayed along the front of the building as well as along the east side. The ground floor is interesting because we have two main vehicle access to the development. We have one on the left side, if you will, as part of the design package or the west, and we have an entrance on the east.

The east access is unique because we have shared access as with existing developments, commercial, retail areas that are using that driveway as back a house. So that’s preserved as part of this development, and we’re using that same lane way to access our loading for garbage and removals. That’s the access on the east. The west access is actually the vehicle access to access underground parking as well as the loading and moving area.

We have, as part of our design, to try to fit in with the fabric of the local area, we’ve widened the podium base along the frontage, and so we have a drive underneath condition. So we’re driving underneath part of the podium where we have residential above. And so we were very cognizant to make this a very bright, open, and safe area. Even though it’s covered and it’s sheltered from the elements from most people walking through that space, it feels at a two-story level.

We’ve provided, as part of our package, some design renderings indicating the base in the middle. And again, our main focus from an urban design perspective was the experience you have walking along the street, along this building. So we’ve matched our three-story podium with the adjacent buildings, and that is a technique that we’ve used to contextualize the development. Then we step back with some terracing, and then the development moves up, and then we thin out our floor plate, as you get to the upper levels, consisting of primarily all the residential units.

Thank you. So in terms of the details of the zone change application itself, the applicant is proposing the zoning by-law amendment to allow for the proposed height of 56 meters, the density of 926 units per hectare, and then site-specific setbacks for front yard, side yard, and rear yard. In addition to this, staff have recommended a number of additional regulations relating to step backs from the podium, the tower footprint, and the ground floor height. And we agree with these recommendations of staff as they’re consistent with the London plan.

So in conclusion, we agree with the findings of the staff report and the recommendation to approve the application. This development is transit supportive and very much in line with the goals of the London plan. Thank you. Thank you, gentlemen.

Anyone from the public that would like to address committee? I don’t see anyone. Oh, excuse me, ma’am. Please give us your name.

Am I in zero? Do you have five minutes? Please go ahead. My name is Annemarie Velastro.

I learned today that a planning department does not circulate planning applications to other policy areas outside the planning area. Therefore, policy on forestry and the urban forestry strategy is not considered when making these planning decisions, and developers don’t have to consider the urban forestry strategy, which is also part of the London plan when designing their buildings. This is a big site, and the severe reductions in setbacks have not been justified in the report by staff, and that is the biggest concern from people that took time to comment on the planning application. Okay, they failed to recognize the goals of the urban strategy.

They’re working against staff in other parts of planning the forestry staff that have made the core a priority to reforest. This committee understands that the downtown core is a heat dome, and this committee understands that our streets are not walkable ‘cause they haven’t developed a shade policy, which has been part of the goals of the forestry staff. They’ve never justified the rationale for the drastic reduction in setbacks. It sounds like tonight it’s a design element and not based on a healthy building.

Their own report, their own noise report has stated that the noise levels from Richmond Street are unhealthy for the residents of the building and recommended a tree buffer. But of course, we can have a tree buffer on this development because they’ve had so many parking spaces, even though they said it’s on a primary transit area, that there isn’t enough soil depth to support plantings and definitely not enough to support trees, and that’s in the staff report. So trees are also part of a climate change strategy, which is also not considered by the planning department. That climate change strategy has several action items that overlap that that can be incorporated into a development, and canopy covering the core is a priority for other parts of staff in this city.

It reduces heat domes, it improves air quality, it provides shade, and for some reason, the people that live downtown don’t get that. Where the application, just prior to this one, there was lots of concerns about, but the residents, but when it comes to the core residents, their concerns are just tossed out. And I like to know why the urban forestry strategy is not considered in planning applications, ‘cause I didn’t get a really good reply today when I spoke to staff. So this building needs to be, if it doesn’t have a buffer, it needs to be a climate controlled interior space, which means that it has to have lots, it has to be air conditioned all the time.

And if you understand climate change, air conditioned buildings contribute to heat outside of that building for everybody else. It just makes the problem worse. So they had a choice to buffer the building with the vegetation trees, or they can have a climate controlled interior space to reduce outside noise for their residents. I also just wanna comment on something that Steve, Councillor Lehman said in the press about studio apartments.

That somehow the studio apartments are somehow going to be affordable. I just wanna let people know that I am a landlord, and I can tell you the studio apartments run from $1,200 to $1,300 a month on average in this city. And a room in our shared house is about $1,000 a month. So if you think that this building is somehow gonna be more affordable because it’s a studio apartment, that’s just not the case.

And that can be easily researched, okay? You don’t have to be a landlord to know that. I also want to just reiterate that we don’t really, we have a housing affordability crisis, not a housing crisis. All the applications that are coming forward are for high-end housing.

So there is lots of money circulating. So we don’t need to use housing crisis to justify these buildings. And so the last thing I wanna say is you can see that there’s no one here tonight. Just Angus and myself came down here tonight.

And I think there’s just a growing frustration about coming down and talking to a committee that is very predictable on how they’re rubber stamping planning applications, and that people’s concerns are being tossed out by the planning department, and then they come down here and they get tossed out again. So if you’re comfortable with talking to an empty gallery, that’s fine, thank you. Anybody else from the public that would like to address the committee? I’ll go to Clerk to see if there’s anyone online.

Through the chair, there’s no one online. Thank you. Seeing that there’s nobody else, I’ll look for a motion to close the PPM. Councillor Hopkins, seconded by Deputy Mayor Lewis.

I’ll call the vote. Opposed in the vote, the motion carries five to zero. Thank you. I’ll put the item on the floor for committee members.

Councillor Frank. Thank you. I’d like to move the staff recommendation, but I added five items to site plan authority that I’ve circulated to the clerk and that are in East Scribe already, and I’d be happy to speak to them if I had a seconder. Okay, Clerk, have you been able to put that in for a screen?

Thank you. I see the clerk has added it with in bold. So there has been a motion made. I’ll look for a seconder.

Councillor or deaf, sorry, Deputy Mayor Lewis. We have a motion moved and seconded. I’ll look for comments or questions. Councillor Frank.

Thank you, I appreciate the seconder. I think that this is actually a great location for info given that it’s downtown and currently a surface level parking a lot with I don’t think any trees or any vegetation. And following up on some of the comments from the gallery, I did add a couple items to try and address some of the climate emergency action plan considerations that we have with respect to new development. And within the climate emergency action plan, we are asking for improvements in development quality and as well as using renewables and investing in biodiverse plans.

So it has been noted and considered and council and staff work towards trying to improve wherever possible. So just wanted to highlight that. And I would also add, I think that this development looks cool as well. So thank you to the people who designed it.

Thank you, Councillor. Any other comments or questions? Councillor Hopkins. Yeah, I too will be supporting the motion.

It’s great opportunity to have a building put in downtown where a parking lot used to be. So I think that’s a start. A little disappointed about the affordable housing conversation. I know we don’t have very many tools to allow for affordable housing units in our buildings.

But I think that should always be a consideration going forward how we do affordable units in our buildings. The other thing I’d like to mention is the importance of amenity space and having space around as we do intensive education. And I really appreciate the applicant being in tune to that and how we create these opportunities. I think the demand is going to be greater as we build, build, build and the need for, especially downtown, our spaces, our trees, our parks become really important to the quality of our lifestyles.

So I want to thank the applicant. Again, parking lot, building and we’ll be supporting the recommendation. Thank you. Any other comments or questions from Canadian members or visiting Councilor Ferra?

Thank you, Chair. I was trying to find my hand icon, but I wasn’t able to find that. So thanks for looking at me. I’m generally supportive of the staff recommendation.

I did want to say that. I see, I would like to see some of the items that staff has put into the report for the requested items. I’d like to see some of those definitely be seen to fruition. And I have to agree with the comments from the committee members, the past committee members.

It’s a surface parking lot, not very well utilized space in my opinion. And it would be considered infill development there. So because we are going to be taking away that surface parking lot, I did make comments on this before, but I have heard from some local businesses. I just, I’d like to add that to the conversation too of businesses just being concerned with losing those parking spots.

So I do see that this would be tied in with our parking strategy moving forward, just because I’m concerned with where the, where visiting people for the, or where visiting patrons of businesses would be parking. And I feel like that would be kind of put out on the streets or wherever the existing parking would be. And that might just lead to congestion. So I would just bring that up for committee to think about that.

I would like to also put out to the applicants, maybe consider a little more three bedroom units. I’m pretty sure I saw the original application had seven three bedroom units. And I think now it’s at three. So just consider that.

And if I’m able to, I would like to, if the chair, if the committee allows me, I’d like to ask a question just to the representatives of the applicant and see if we can get maybe some understanding of when we’d expect shovels in the ground for this application. Yeah, I’ll go to the applicant. What are the plans, assuming zoning and site plan and building permits, et cetera? Are there any estimates of when building would commence on the site?

Through you chair, unfortunately, I’m not in a position to really be able to accurately indicate when that would be. The project is currently being priced at a very, very high level, but we have not gone into detailed design development at this stage to be at a point where we’d be able to project the overall timeline. I think with obviously staff support, council support, it will energize the process from a client’s perspective. And their stated goal to me was they want to get in, build the beautiful building and get out.

They really just want to mobilize and get intensification going. And so they are not looking to slow play this, if that’s a concern here. Thank you, Councillor. Thank you for that answer.

Yeah, the sooner the better, if we’re going to be, you know, our city needs housing. So I understand that, you know, some housing is more suited to others and some housing is not, but we do need all the full spectrum, the full suite of housing. So the sooner the better is better. And I do want to say with respect to Councillor Frank’s amendments here, I do appreciate that.

So I’m glad to see something like that. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor. I’ll go to Councillor Pribble.

Thank you, and questions for the chair to get it to the staff or to the applicant. When I look at the picture, so to the west of the building is going to be entrance to the garages. So the three meters there, there will be kind of outside, but to the east side, and if I remember correctly, the applicant mentioned that it’s going to be used, the east side for both the retailers, to the east of it, and also the waste trucks. And I just don’t know, three meters is it considered sufficient for the trucks to get through, because I think there are like 2.6 or 2.7 meters, and there’s the mirrors.

So I just want to know if it’s for the allys, and what is the minimum measurement access, because currently we have three meters. Go to the applicant to make some comments regarding lane way width. Thank you, through you, Chair. So just a quick clarification.

So within our property, we have roughly 6.7 meters of width. That would be available to the back of house services for the properties on the east. As well as for the currently contemplated location for the garbage and waste loaded on our site. Councillor.

Okay, so if I look at through the Albert Street, when I look at the drawing, so it looks three meters, and then there’s the gray area, so that would go additional three point something meters, so we would get six meters. Okay, thank you, no more questions? Okay, thank you. Any other comments or questions from committee or visiting Councillors?

Committee will allow me a brief one. I remember when this might be dating me. Not that long ago. There was a commercial bakery on this site, and I remember when it was taken down, and I thought pretty soon there was a reason for that, and so I’m happy to see the applicant coming through here with plans to increase our housing stock.

Okay, seeing no further comments or questions for committee, we have motion moved in second, and I’ll call the vote. It was in the vote, the motion carries five to zero. Thank you, that concludes our scheduled items, so there are no items for direction. Five, we have a deferred matters additional business.

Five point one deferred matters list, and five point two added, which is a 12th report of the committee advisor, committee on planning. I’ll look to Councillor Hopkins. I’ll move the motion to receive. Thank you, I’ll look seconder on that.

Deputy Mayor Lewis, any comments or questions? We have motion moved in second, and I’ll call the vote on that. Okay, the vote is on your screen. Closing the vote, the motion carries five to zero.

Okay, we move on to six, which we have a confidential matter. I’ll look to the clerk to explain the reason for going into in-camera. Through the chair, the committee is going into camera on a matter pertaining to advice is subject to solicitor client privilege, including communications necessary for that purpose. From the city, from the solicitor and officers and employees of the corporation, the subject matter pertains to litigation or potential litigation with respects to appeals related to 2005, 2005, clearly rode at the Ontario Land Tribunal.

Thank you, I’ll ask Clerk to prepare the room for, we’re gonna stay here for this until I know when the room is ready. Thank you, we’re back. I’ll look to the Deputy Mayor to report out. Thank you, Chair, and through you, I will report out the progress was made for the matter on which we went into confidential session regarding client solicitor privilege and Ontario Land Tribunal ruling.

Thank you, Deputy Mayor. brings us to a general of promotion to adjourn. Councilor Frank, seconded by Deputy Mayor Lewis, hand vote. Closing the vote, the motion carries five to zero.

Thank you for the remaining staff who are here. As always and for committee members for your work this evening.