Building industry: “No logic” in new provincial plans
By Joel Wittnebel/The Oshawa Express
A series of proposed changes to the province’s plans for growth were once again up for discussion at city hall.
Draft plans for revised versions of the Growth Plan for the Greater Golden Horseshoe, the Greenbelt Plan and the Oak Ridges Moraine Conservation Plan were slammed by members of the development services committee on Aug. 22. In a special meeting of council two days later, councillors learned they were not the only ones who were concerned.
Council heard from Don Given and Matthew Cory of Malone Given Parsons Ltd. the firm retained by the Building Industry and Land Development Association (BILD) to analyze the recent changes proposed by the province.
According to Given, the changes are a “political document designed to change the way we live.”
Motivated by a desire to combat climate change and perhaps curb urban sprawl, the changes would see a steep increase in intensification for future developments, a clearer focus on public transit and building up around transit hubs, as well as continuing to protect environmentally sensitive areas such as the Greenbelt and the Oak Ridges Moraine.
While councillors and the presenters noted the goals of the new plans were “laubable,” Given says “there’s a real fault in their logic.”
“They’ve got to pause and get it right. We’ve got to live with this for a long time,” he says.
In analyzing the province’s numbers, Given says his firm has concluded the province underestimates the amount of growth that has taken place since the last review of the growth plan in 2006, and by calling for more intensification, it will cause more land to be used up for wider regional roads to accommodate transit, more storm ponds, and more parkland to accommodate the increase in population, further limiting the amount of land remaining for development.
“The problem I think they have is the measures they are implementing are extreme,” Given says.
Specifically, the province is looking to drive up a pair of development-related targets that municipalities will need to follow moving forward. First, the number of people and jobs per hectare in new developments will be increased from 50 to 80, and 60 per cent of new development will need to occur within a city’s “built boundary,” an increase from the current 40 per cent.
For Oshawa, the only remaining piece of significance in its built boundary, which includes most of the land south of Conlin Road, is the Kedron area.
The Kedron area includes a layout for 10 separate subdivisions, plans for which are already in place using the province’s current target of 50 people and jobs per hectare. According to Warren Munro, Oshawa’s director of planning, the city barely achieved that goal with 50.5 people and jobs per hectare.
According to Councillor John Aker, those developments will be moving ahead as planned.
However, if the province’s plans are approved as is, it will require the shortfall in people and jobs per hectare to be made up for elsewhere. This means further intensification will be pushed into Oshawa’s only developable lands remaining further north in Columbus.
“Columbus isn’t a community that you want to see apartment buildings in,” says Mayor John Henry, adding that is not the only problem caused by the new plans.
“Having downtown Toronto densities in communities that don’t have the infrastructure in place from transit to hospitals to roads, is going to be a real challenge,” he says.
The province has also made no mention of any funding or programs to assist municipalities with the proposed changes.
The lone voice of dissent in the council chambers, Amy McQuaid-England, says council’s actions moving forward, a flat-out assertion that the province’s plans are not the right solution, was the wrong way to go.
“There was no compromise in this,” she says, adding that while nobody would agree to intensifying Columbus, the city needs to begin thinking about the future.
“The province is trying to say we need to look forward and they’re trying to plan 20, 40 years from now,” she says. “The problem in Oshawa is we’re still planning as if it was 20, 40 years ago.”
The province has extended its deadline for municipalities to comment on the proposed plans until the end of October from the initial deadline of September.