← Back to summary
Full Transcript
Approves Townhouse Zoning Amendment - 2026-03-09 - Planning and Strategic Initiatives Committee
Kitchener · March 10, 2026
important that these interactions remain respectful towards other members of the public staff and council in case where dialogue is not respectful or a delegate interrupts a counselor staff or other delegations, makes derogatory statements about counselor, staff or others that are disrespectful or uses hate speech or language that is considered harmful uh or defamatory, the chair may interject and take necessary actions. to maintain a respectful and inclusive environment for everyone which could include uh or involve removal of uh from the meeting. One last reminder, delegates uh are permitted to address council for a maximum of 5 minutes which will be displayed on the screen in front of you when there is a 30 second remaining in your time. You will hear a small audio tone that will signal 30 seconds remaining. Please take that time to cons uh conclude your presentation as there will be a second tone at the completion of that time. Sorry. Uh just remember something else. Please take that time to conclude your presentation. There will be a second note in the completion of your time and microphone will turn off shortly after exceeded 5 minutes. Lastly, please do not take offense if following your presentation. There are no questions from council. This is council's time to really listen and reflect upon the opinions and ideas shared with us from our community members. I just remember I was speaking twi today and as I was speaking there were two rings. So as I was saying it, I kind of being reflective myself. That's what made me laugh. Um, just as a reminder, it's a public hearing matter. This is a formal public meeting to consider applications under the planning act. In accordance with the Interior Planning Act, only applicant or owner of the land affected by the planning applications. A specified person or public body and or the minister may appeal the most decisions. If you do not make verbal submissions to this committee or council or make written submissions prior to city council making a decision on the proposal, you may not be entitled to appeal a decision of the city of Kitchener to the Interial Land Tribunal and may not be added as a party to the hearing of an appeal before the OOLT. To understand your rights of appeal, if any, or for further clarifications regarding appeals, please see the Ontario Land Tribunal website. Our only item today is a zoning bylaw amendment application uh as item 6.1. Mr. Schneider, I believe you are presenting first. Whenever you're ready. Thank you. Thank you. Good evening, chair, mayor, and members of council. My name is Eric Schneider, and I'm a senior planner at the city. I'm here tonight to make a recommendation for approval of a zoning bylaw amendment to facilitate a low-rise residential development. As we advance to the next slide, I will discuss the site context of the lands. The lands are comprised of three blocks with block one fronting Blair Creek Drive and blocks two and three fronting Blair Valley Street. The lands have not yet been assigned municipal addresses or split into individual parcels for separate ownership. These are known as lotless blocks. The lands are on the north side of New Dundy Road south of Blair Creek Drive and are part of the Staer Woods Harvest Park subdivision which is currently under development. The lands are currently vacant. On this slide, I will discuss the proposed concept. The three blocks are proposed to be developed with 67 street fronting townhouse units within 12 townhouse buildings. Each townhouse dwelling would have an attached garage and a singlecar driveway. Blocks one and three are adjacent to the large rectangular parcel on the corner, which is a future neighborhood park of approximately one hectare in size. The next slide illustrates the proposed zoning bylaw amendment. The amendment would add a sightsp specific provision that includes sight specific development standards for reduced lot width on external units and to allow townhouse blocks of six rather than four. The three parcels affected are shown as area one on the map. In regards to water capacity, the region provided comments stating that the proposal does not increase the overall number of units contemplated through the existing service agreement for these stages of the Sterwood subdivision and therefore has no objection to this application. Next, I will briefly summarize the opportunity in this application. the opportunity to create 67 new townhouse dwelling units in a low-rise building form and to allow for appropriate development within this planned Greenfield subdivision that is draft approved and registered to contribute to the diversity of housing within the Dune South neighborhood. In summary, the proposed sight specific provision will facilitate a new low-rise development and the proposed application represents good planning principles and is consistent with provincial, regional, and the city's planning policies. Thank you. Thank you, Eric. We also have a delegation, Pier Shovel from MHBC. Pier, as you know, five minutes my mic on? Yep. Good evening, uh, Mr. Chair, members of committee. My name is Pierre Chauvan with MHBC planning. I'm really just here to answer any questions and here to support uh, the staff recommendation. Thank you, Council. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Shan. Nice to see you again. Um, I just have a question with regard in light of the water issue that we've got at the region. It's it's a um, it's a concern, I'm sure, for everyone. I know it is. I'm just wondering if the builders are um starting to or do they already uh have methods of water conservation like gray water recycling or um uh low fixtures putting little fixtures low little fixtures in the in the units. Uh you Mr. Sure, absolutely. They are um they're low flush toilets, uh water fixtures as you mentioned. Um you know, high efficiency uh washers and things like that that reduce or use less water. Uh I would say in terms of and I can't and this is just anecdotally, I would say gray water use is probably the low lowest uh type of sort of uptake. I haven't really seen much of that. Uh but certainly the the in terms of the design of the homes and the appliances that we have everything is uh certainly more geared now towards water efficiency in like recently then this isn't something that's always happened it's just never come up so that's why for all these reasons um I think uh through you Mr. chair. I think it's been uh predominantly for a number of years now. And I think as you've heard through some of the regional staff reports, they've even noted that a lot of those uh water saving efficiencies like we've kind of even plateaued at at at sort of reducing as much as we can through that. Certainly there's other things, but like low flush toilets was was that was huge and we got huge uptake throughout the region uh through the incentive programs they had. But uh Activa has always uh you know designed their homes uh to be efficient as possible and you know it's only affects their bottom dollar as well uh you know and so it's uh it's it's just good good business for everyone. Okay. Thank you. I'll group this one. Yeah. So you move it. Okay. Thank you. And that was a good question. I think it's something we have to look at broader for conservation counc. Yeah. Thank you and thank you for coming in. Um I noticed in the um the six nations of the Grand River report there are several requests that they they had in their um comments and I was wondering if you could speak to them. So for example, they talk about um that the landscaping should be native plants, buildings and streetscape should be designed using bird and light friendly um practices etc. I just wondered um you know are these things that you will take into consideration uh through your chair. Uh uh short answer is yes to a certain degree. I think there were other comments in there about uh setbacks and and things that kind of are outside of the sort of this particular application. But with respect to landscaping for sure, uh we have uh street uh street tree planting plan already approved for the whole subdivision and and as part of the city's uh standards. You know, they are native trees. Uh we're not pling planting any invasive or or uh non-native species. Uh the planting on the individual lots, that's really up to the individual homeowners. So, but where we can and we have done done that. Okay. Um my second question has to do with affordable units. Are there plans for any affordable units in the in the complex? Uh three, Mr. Chair. No, but these are street towns. Uh and um they are more affordable. They're not strictly affordable, but uh I should say that that is really uh what is selling right now because of the price point. And this is why it is pursuing this this they see this product as very valuable to them as part of this next phase of their development. Right. Okay. Thank you. Uh thank you P. That's all the questions but I a couple more myself. Uh you're right. we are seeing a change in the type of I guess the attractive product in the market whereas you know stack towns in the past and now it's seeing more of a street fronting towns and still something more affordability point so it's good that you guys are looking at that um this is a question that came up with recent delegation from sustainable vulnerable region just giving us a report generally you know state affairs in in the region city of Kitner how we endeavoring to meet our um our conservation um greenhouse gas emission conservation um goals towards 2050. One of the things I had asked was looking at development changes where our um ashalt roofs which are darker color typically used in the industry instead using a lighter color or white or gray color which is more reflective and um reflects the heat out and creates more of a cooler environment. Um, is this something I know you can't as a planning expert, you can't necessarily answer it, but this is something that you can take back to your client and that they can help provide feedback to us as a council and help inform our decision- making as to perhaps put some of those standards into our approval processes. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Yeah, it's great comment and uh for sure could take that back to Activa and and uh share that information. Okay, love that. looking at, you know, new new builders and developers that are looking to pilot that. Again, it's not a substantial extra cost or any difference. It's a different color material than standard, but it's better for the environment, better for the community there. Absolutely. All right. Thank you very much. That's everyone for you. Uh questions of staff? Council Chapman? Yeah. Thank you. Um on the um letter from the region dated December 23rd, 2025, it says um in the context of the the water supply, it says the region is not in a position to support approval of this application at this time. Then in the um letter dated February the 12th of this year, it says um that the region continues not to support approval of ZB ZBA application dot dot dot dot dot at this time um is not currently entering into new servicing agreements and are reviewing form ones on a casebyase basis. So I didn't see anywhere in the staff report that we're putting a holding provision on this. I was just wondering um if maybe I missed it. Uh thanks for the question uh through the chair. Um the the ZBA uh application number that is referenced in uh the February letter from the region is a separate application that is part of a a different OPA ZBA in within the same subdivision to increase the density on approximately 10 to 12 blocks not these blocks in this subject application. That application is currently on hold right now because we're looking at um sanitary capacity separate from the water issue that was identified as a um something we needed to look into prior to the region having the uh announcing the water capacity issue. So um that ZBA application that's referenced is a separate application that's not this subject application. So this subject application uh did not require a holding provision and in the the letter from December 23rd uh through the chair the uh letter from December 23rd was stating that they didn't support the application at this time. Uh but through further discussions with the applicant about the existing servicing agreement and uh figuring out the numbers of approved units within that subdivision, the region then changed their uh comments, sent an updated letter that they now do support this uh subject application. And is that letter, sorry to harness this, but is that letter included in the in the package or is this a letter that's independent of the two that we've got here? Uh, no, that I'm referring to the February 12th letter is the updated comments from the region. The the note, like I said, uh, in the second paragraph that's referencing a ZBA application as a different ZBA application that's tied to an an official plan amendment that is still under review. Okay, thank you. Seeing no other questions, ask a couple myself. When's a tenative timeline that we expecting that the step of development move forward? They have servicing there already to move forward or is that servicing is would still be incumbent before they start building? Um to the chair, the applicant is working on servicing approvals with our development engineering um division right now. As far as timing goes, it might be a better question for Mr. Chauan. Okay. All right. Um the other question is regarding some of the changes that they're requesting and um shortening the the lot frontage and the end units or going from a block of uh from typical four to six. Is this something that we're starting to see as a request in all other projects as well? Is this more sight specific to this one? Are we seeing this and you see that we as staff are supporting this and looking at some of our infill projects as well where we're giving kind of a little bit more flexibility from the six to from the four to the six as well as a lot with also are we seeing general flexibility on some of these uh uh recommendations? Uh yeah, certainly to the chair. Um if you recall, we had an application last year for 400 Westwood Drive. That was five townhouse units. So it was similar requesting an increase from the four that were permitted and uh also similar request for reduced lot width on external units. Um so uh street town homes being permitted in res 4 is new to the 2019 bylaw. Um, and with those street towns being permitted in the res four zone, they come with greater lot widths. And it's a much greater increase than what was permitted in the old zoning bylaw, which was 5.5 meters for interior or external lot widths. So, when we introduced street town homes in the new zoning bylaw, uh, permitted under risk 4, we attached that 10 meter lot width to it. So it's kind of we're we're still seeing the industry respond to that and we have seen examples of uh requests for reductions in that lot width and uh we review them on a site by site basis and if it can uh be justified and meet good planning principles we have supported it in the past as well. Okay. The reason why I raised it is seeing this industry standard and industry I guess their asks. If you're seeing more of that as we're looking at the comprehensive review of a zoning bylaw, this may be some sort of amendment or direction that we would want to go to. So we're not seeing more sight specific zone change requests when we know typically what the industry is looking for of greater number than the four or the little bit of a uh adjustment to the lot width to the street fronting towns. as a delegate specify street fronting towns do provide that affordable price point to uh a freehold household as opposed to leaseold. So if we can uh make it easy as an entry point to that housing stock it would be benefit to us through our overall review of our zoning bylaws. So just as a comment um I see no one else. Uh I'll take move moved by councelor Mash. All those in favor opposed and that item carries. And that's the last item moved by councelor Deno to adjurnn. All those in favor opposed. And that carries. Thank you.