City looks to alter downtown development benefits
By Joel Wittnebel/The Oshawa Express
City councillors are looking to take two community improvement plans, and meld them into one.
Under the new program, the Central Business District Renaissances CIP – which has been offering developers incentives on facade improvement loans, converting to residential loans and development charge exemptions in the downtown core since 2001 – and the Downtown Shoulder Area Renaissance CIP – which has been offering similar incentives to developers just outside of the central downtown area since 2005 – would be joined together to form the Urban Growth Centre CIP.
The new plan would cover the area previously covered by both CIPs, with Brock Street to the north, Ritson Road and Drew Street to the east, John Street to the south and Oshawa Creek to the west.
Rather than loans, the new CIP would favour giving out grants, and would come with an annual budget of $60,000 funded from city reserves.
“We’ve had some terrific successes in our urban growth area, we want it to continue,” said Councillor John Aker, the chair of the development services committee.
Under the new program – which will begin the public consultation process in the new year – many of the program’s loans would be increased, and involve a new economic stimulus program which could offer a maximum of $20,000 per floor to developers or tenants who are making improvements to leasehold or accessibility issues.
According to Warren Munro, the city’s manager of policy, the switch to the grant programs was to stop developers from taking advantage of the 25 per cent kick back they received on loans, and the latter also involved much more paperwork and staff time.
“If we’re going to do that, we might as well cut out the red tape,” he said.
Grants would also be assessed under new criteria, including their location in relation to the business improvement area (BIA), their proximity to major roads, the materials used, and the construction value. The city will also be looking to target certain sectors such as information technology or science innovation.
The potential switch to a large CIP also stems from downtown Oshawa being labelled as an urban growth centre by the province in 2006. That provincial initiative identified 25 downtown areas that could be hubs for urban growth and noted policies to stimulate their growth. The project aims to have a density of 200 people or jobs per hectare.
Currently, Oshawa sits between 105 and 110 according to Munro, and this new plan could help grow that number.