In case you missed it. This article was previously published on StratfordToday.
The city's north end could be getting a massive amount of new townhouses.
Stratford city council on Monday granted 'draft approval' for the proposed 193 residences located at 520 and 525 Orr Street, subject to a laundry list of conditions.
Most of those are related to the condominium declaration and provisions within it. They also stipulate that the two halves must be registered as one condominium corporation and that the condominium may be built in two phases.
Concerned citizen Jane Marie Mitchell delegated on the application. She advocated for a revaluation of how subdivisions are composed in the city.
“We need to work now to be sustainable for the future,” Mitchell said. “ We are definitely in a climate emergency - if not crisis.”
She asked council to consider using an environmental lens to get to net-zero, due to the city’s declaration of a climate emergency, using a One Planet Principle lens to “make more complete communities,” and using a housing lens which includes a proportionally mixed income formula for the inventory of housing, so there is “housing for all.”
“There is a need to match more housing built with the incomes of residents who actually live here,” Mitchell said. “Mixed income housing communities do work. This is a service that Stratford and council need to provide for our community.”
The draft plan has the 193 residential townhouses being built on 5.4 hectares of vacant land.
No public meeting is required for the project, since the lands are vacant.
After Mitchell’s delegation, Adam Betteridge, director of building and planning services, said that the guidelines for housing and what is required from developers are set through the city’s Official Plan, which is currently under review.
He noted that the standards set by the provincial policy statement (PPS), the provincial government’s policies on land use planning, are currently under review.
“The city’s a creature of the province,” he said. “We get direction under the Ontario Planning Act, about how we can plan, how we can develop, how we can grow, and what we can leverage from developers. So the PPS is under review of the province so there may be definitions coming about what affordable is, what attainable is, what municipalities can and can't do.”
In Monday night’s agenda, it was stated that Chris Pidgeon of GSP Group, the applicant, would delegate on the item. In an addendum posted on the city’s website after the agenda was published it was stated that Pidgeon had withdrawn his delegation but supports the motion staff recommended.
Pidgeon retired from the planning group at the end of last year, according to its website, right before getting a one-month suspension from the Ontario Professional Planners Institute regarding his work with both a Chinese-based business and the City of Stratford. It was not indicated when the suspension started.
The draft approval, which council passed, only applies for five years. If final approval is not given in that time, the decision made by council Monday night will lapse.
