Dock deal not sunk yet
Posted By BOB BRUTON
Posted 2 months ago
The Dock Road condo deal isn't quite dead yet.
Barrie councillors decided last night to send a motion denying the required rezoning to its development services committee.
"The applicant wants to meet to present some potential amendments and discuss them at the committee level," said Coun. Lynn Strachan.
Owner Marcelo Miller wants his three acres at the northwest corner of Dock and Tynhead roads for a 30-townhouse condo development, but requires a rezoning to multiple-family dwelling from single-family home, as well as a condominium exemption.
That rezoning was to be denied until Strachan convinced a majority of councillors to send the motion back to committee.
Coun. Alex Nuttall, who represents this part of Barrie, supports the position of city planning staff to deny the rezoning.
"I have quite a number of interested residents," he said of the rezoning application. "I would hope it (the committee meeting) is when residents can attend.
"About 80% of my ward drives to Toronto everyday (to work)."
Nuttall suggested the development services committee meeting should take place after 5 p. m., or better yet, after 6 p. m.
City planning staff have opposed the rezoning for a number of reasons.
There are single-family homes to the east, west and south of this property and Tynhead Park to the north. Some residents have said that townhouses are out of character with the neighbourhood.
The proposed Dock/Tynhead site is mostly a woodlot, about a kilometre away from the nearest Barrie Transit stop on Hurst Drive and not close to either neighbourhood commercial uses or a grocery store. There are no pedestrian or bicycle links either.
Townhouses and/or condos, according to the city's plans for intensification, are to be part of complete communities. That's also what provincial growth plans, such as Places to Grow, want for Ontario cities.
The staff report also indicates there could be traffic concerns. Tyndale Road is a private street which accesses several waterfront homes along the shoreline. Only a single access to the townhouses is being proposed from Dock Road.
A public meeting on this rezoning application was held in September of 2008 and Ray Duhamel, of Jones Consulting, said the project would help create a diversity of housing types and mixed uses in the area.
He said the surrounding land is in transition, vegetation buffer areas would be possible and on-street parking would not be permitted. Duhamel also indicated the project complied with the Provincial Policy Statement and the Growth Plan.
Area residents, however, said it did not comply with provincial planning policies and they didn't expect intensified housing in their neighbourhood. Residents were also concerned with over-crowding at the local public elementary school, and the potential impact on Kempenfelt Bay.
The city has done an intensification study, which was passed by council in June. It identifies specific intensification focus areas for development.
City policy planner Celeste Terry, in her staff report on this application, said there's nothing in the study to imply that any and all development applications, proposed under the banner of intensification, are automatically given favourable consideration.
This is the second Dock Road condo project which could be turned down this year.
In June, council denied a 24- unit, three-storey walkup condominium building at 200C Dock Rd., by turning down needed rezoning and Official Plan changes on the waterfront property.
That decision was appealed to the Ontario Municipal Board, then withdrawn, and Nuttall says the appeal has been entered again, although the OMB has not made a decision.
bbruton@thebarrieexaminer.com
