Development surrounding potential new townhouses on 9 Bayside Place made several amendments to its initial plans presented in March 2023 after hearing community concerns, and a public hearing surrounding the development took place during yesterday's town council meeting.
Prior to hearing the community's concerns, Vice President of Operations for Livewell Communities Inc. Steve Morofke and President and CEO of Newrock Developments Cam Ens spoke on the amendments they made and how they believe this new development will both address Strathmore's housing shortage and also fit well with what nearby community members hope to see.
"We reviewed the feedback from the community and we still felt that a design for this land could be done that accomplished the goal of multi-family housing but that improved the meshing or the interface with the already existing homes to the north and to the east," Morofke said.
The development of the land would take place on the southern portion, with the northern portion being limited to two-story townhouses, should future development occur. However, at the moment Morofke said there are no plans to develop on the northern portion of the land.
No development is planned for the northern portion at the moment, and several changes were made to the southern portion to respond to community concernsAmong the changes made to the planned development on the southern portion were:
- Limiting building height to 12 metres. Height is measured by the eaves of the roof.
- Reducing the density from 60 units to 50 units. This included deleting a building from the original proposal.
- The 3 story buildings from the original design have been relocated and reoriented to the west and south property lines.
- Added a green space amenity area bordering the north area with playground equipment.
- Decks coming off the backs of the home now face west towards the industrial lots, or south towards centennial drive. This was done in response to privacy concerns of people being able to look into their neighbours' backyards.
Regarding privacy concerns, Morofke said the distance between the two south buildings and the fence line south of Centennial Drive is 38 metres, so he believes this will not be a prominent issue.
"We're not saying there wouldn't be any impact at all, but these decks are definitely not going to be right on top of the people across Centennial Drive. You may be aware there are people out on their decks, but I don't personally feel that there will be a major impact to people being in their backyards," he said.
Morofke presented this line of sight diagram to demonstrate how he believes the 38m distance is enough distance as to not cause privacy concerns.Despite these changes, several community members still have concerns surrounding the potential townhouses. The most common concerns included:
- The development site's land is on a higher elevation compared to the surrounding areas, so a 12m building may appear considerably taller due to the land elevation.
- Increased traffic and potential parking issues.
- The townhouses aren't actually promoting affordable housing.
"You will essentially be building a 12-metre wall between the project and the neighbourhoods surrounding it. This is simply what Strathmore is not about. Does it really matter if it's two-story or three-story? 12 metres is still 12 metres," Dirk van Egmond said.
"A continuation of the building style already in place of 8 Bayside Place would be more appropriate for the area and more appealing to the eye," he continued.
"This is being approached as affordable housing, only 13 of these units are affordable housing. So to promote it that this is such a great thing... 50 units, but only 13 are affordable housing? All the other units can be $2500, we don't know. It's very misleading to say this is affordable housing," Tabatha Poole said.
Affordable housing is defined as rent that costs $1800 a month, which is what Poole was referencing in the above quote. For fellow community member Josie Levesque, her concern is that this price point shouldn't be considered affordable to begin with.
"$1800 is not low-income, it is not affordable in any way shape or form for any kind of person," Levesque said. She elaborated that when she was a single mother she lived on a monthly income of $3200, and said a price point of $1800 would not be affordable to her at that time or for anyone else looking for affordable housing.
Mayor Pat Fule later clarified that this development is not low-income housing; the purpose is to increase the inventory of living spaces in Strathmore.
"We have such a low inventory of rental places for people struggling to live in Strathmore that this option — which has not been approved yet — but this option is to help with the affordability of finding places to rent, strictly from the fact that if you have more inventory of units, that can help the price of rentals in the town for people looking. This is not low-income housing," Fule said.
Levesque later brought up a concern that the developers could simply break their own height restrictions and other rules and the Town wouldn't be able to do anything about it, but the Town of Strathmore's Manager of Development Services Chuck Procter said the Town would be able to immediately shut down further development if the developers try to work outside of an agreed-upon limit presented in the blueprints.
Town Council voted in favour of a third reading 5-1, with Councillor Mitzner being the only one opposed to a second reading. Councillor Wegener abstained from voting due to the fact he had a previous engagement prior to the land use bylaw, so he disqualified himself from voting on the issue. Wegener would not have known the full details surrounding the public discussion surrounding the bylaw.
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