waterloowarrior
Jul 19, 2008, 2:33 PM
http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/city/story.html?id=051e1d5b-67ad-41e2-8bfa-e3d728cbe7c2
Delay factor
The approval process for new communities is bogged down at city hall. What used to take eight months, has escalated to nearly two years, forcing two builders to cancel home sales and the city to vow to overhaul the system. Patrick Dare reports.
Patrick Dare
The Ottawa Citizen
Saturday, July 19, 2008
Ottawa's developers are fed up with a city building-approvals process that can take years. But city councillors are starting to express their own disenchantment with a process they feel is too driven by developers. By the end of the year, the city is promising an entirely new approvals system.
The delays in getting building approvals have become a serious problem for the city's builders. Tartan Homes had to give deposits back to purchasers for the 260-house Fraser Fields community the company is doing with Holitzner Homes in Barrhaven. Tartan got draft approval for the subdivision in October 2006. By late June, the company was hoping to get certificates of approval to put in roads and pipes.
"Everything is just bogged down," says Pierre Dufresne, vice-president of land development at Tartan. While there's a public perception of rubber-stamping at city hall, in fact "there's delay after delay after delay," he says.
Dufresne is quick to say he does not fault the people who work at Ottawa City Hall, some of whom he is working with to change the process.
But he says the City of Ottawa -- created in 2001 through the amalgamation of 12 local governments -- has ended up with an approvals process that is fragmented and where no one is clearly in charge.
Ten years ago, the time from draft subdivision approval to finished house was between eight and 12 months. Today, you have to add another year to that wait, says Dufresne.
Landscaping issues, engineering changes, community association objections and representations from Ontario government ministries and conservation authorities can all drag the process down.
The city will give initial approval to a new community, then someone will object because some trees have to come down. Delays and negotiations ensue.
For builders trying to develop in the established areas of the city, there's confusion and frequently delay. The city's official plan for development calls for intensification -- building more on less land in a bid to curb urban sprawl -- but the zoning for specific pieces of land doesn't reflect that new philosophy.
So builders are lining up to appeal city refusals to the Ontario Municipal Board, a process that can easily add six months to the project and generate big legal bills.
"There's no certainty," says Dufresne.
John Herbert, executive director of the Greater Ottawa Home Builders' Association, says builders understood amalgamation would create turmoil for the first couple of years but didn't expect the endless delays that are commonplace today. Herbert says approvals are two or three times longer than they were before municipal amalgamation.
"It's the worst I've ever seen," says Herbert. "It's just reached an all-time low. Everybody's at their wits' end."
The lack of speed and flexibility at city hall is having significant consequences for citizens, says Herbert. For instance, developers are willing to build parks in new communities and their customers pay for the parks through large development charges. But the city won't allow the builders to create the parks and families wait for years for the city to construct them.
Frank Cairo, a senior vice-president with Mattamy Homes, says Ottawa's approvals process is a highly bureaucratic mess that is squeezing the creativity out of both the city's professional staff and the developers who are waiting for the city's OK before they start construction.
Cairo says there are jurisdictional overlaps, confusion about who approves what and an endless seeking of "consensus" that leads to big delays. He says that the company's building project in Barrhaven has been delayed by at least a year.
He says the cost isn't just measured in money lost and prospective homeowners frustrated by delays, but in the look of new communities. Any deviation from the normal standards -- perhaps a different-sized right of way, or a different kind of park -- is treated with extreme caution.
Good urban design, says Cairo, should respond to the particular details of a site, but Ottawa developers are building suburbs with the same look because they are building to the same standard, which wins fast approval at city hall.
"The suburbs are homogeneous, not because developers are raping and pillaging the land. It's because that is what gets approved," says Cairo.
"The system really does shoot down good ideas of staff and good ideas of developers," he says. "Getting an approval becomes extraordinarily complex.
Sometimes innovation is lost because the only way to get something approved on time is to maintain the status quo. Homogeneity is fast and diversity is slow."
What both Cairo and Dufresne say is needed is a streamlined process where there's clearly one person at city hall in charge who makes a final decision and keeps the project reasonably on time with a clear schedule for approvals.
The developers are not alone in their frustration with the city's planning process.
On June 24 at a meeting of city council's planning and environment committee, Somerset Councillor Diane Holmes warned the public has lost faith in the city's control of development. She said that while city governments used to do their own engineering and planning studies, developers commission and pay for the studies today -- hardly providing neutral advice on which the city can make decisions.
Kanata South Councillor Peggy Feltmate said that all of the studies being done for development don't seem to be improving the way communities are built. She noted there's a street in Kanata with four schools, but almost no road access.
"There's a problem with the way we plan," says Feltmate. "The public definitely does not have confidence in our studies."
The city approves subdivisions, but doesn't always take responsibility for the bigger picture issues such as traffic implications of new house building, says Stittsville-Kanata West Councillor Shad Qadri.
"We have to look at long term," says Qadri.
Capital Councillor Clive Doucet says developers made the argument for Riverside South, saying it could built, only to be followed by pleading for an urgent widening of Limebank Road because the community is in gridlock.
When millions of dollars are on the line with prospective developments, it's hard to have confidence in developers' consultant reports, says Doucet.
In the hugely controversial development of the 725-hectare Kanata West, the project has been questioned and delayed for years partly because the city is one of the landowners in the development group and all of the documentation supporting the project has been paid for and controlled by the landowners.
City council has agreed to spend $300,000 on an independent analysis of the project, with taxpayers paying the full shot to ensure an unbiased result.
Who pays the bill, who calls the shots and what the approvals process should look like are all questions the city is looking at.
The city agrees that the development approvals process must be changed and this year promised a new one-stop process to be designed by the fall and in place by December.
Nancy Schepers, the deputy city manager in charge of development approvals, promises "a complete rethink" of the system, though she cautions it won't solve programs like gridlocked roads.
Planning director John Moser promises "a sea change in how we review development."
One of the big hurdles will be finding the money to make changes. Mayor Larry O'Brien is pushing for hundreds of job cuts -- outside emergency services -- to improve the city's financial position, so it will be hard to add any staff to move approvals faster. For the city to start do more development studies will cost many millions of dollars when the city is already looking at a tax increase of at least 4.9 per cent next year. Moser says development application fees may have to go up; the city's auditor general has already reported on a gap of over $4 million between what the approvals process costs the city and what it recovers from developers and their customers.
For the city, the key strategy for the new system will be a team approach, where staff from various departments will be brought together to work on applications, especially the large subdivision applications that are being bogged down. Builders will have one stop at city hall: the department of planning, transit and the environment.
"Right now everybody's got a little piece," say Moser. Staff, says Moser, need to see the wider picture and the process needs to air all possible contentious issues at the start of the approvals process, rather than the middle or the end. The city must streamline the process and start to focus on design, since good design will allay community opposition to new development, says Moser.
Senior city staff will spend considerable time this summer trying to figure out how the new approvals process will work.
© The Ottawa Citizen 2008
interested in seeing what they come up with.... too bad they didn't really talk about infill developments as well.
Delay factor
The approval process for new communities is bogged down at city hall. What used to take eight months, has escalated to nearly two years, forcing two builders to cancel home sales and the city to vow to overhaul the system. Patrick Dare reports.
Patrick Dare
The Ottawa Citizen
Saturday, July 19, 2008
Ottawa's developers are fed up with a city building-approvals process that can take years. But city councillors are starting to express their own disenchantment with a process they feel is too driven by developers. By the end of the year, the city is promising an entirely new approvals system.
The delays in getting building approvals have become a serious problem for the city's builders. Tartan Homes had to give deposits back to purchasers for the 260-house Fraser Fields community the company is doing with Holitzner Homes in Barrhaven. Tartan got draft approval for the subdivision in October 2006. By late June, the company was hoping to get certificates of approval to put in roads and pipes.
"Everything is just bogged down," says Pierre Dufresne, vice-president of land development at Tartan. While there's a public perception of rubber-stamping at city hall, in fact "there's delay after delay after delay," he says.
Dufresne is quick to say he does not fault the people who work at Ottawa City Hall, some of whom he is working with to change the process.
But he says the City of Ottawa -- created in 2001 through the amalgamation of 12 local governments -- has ended up with an approvals process that is fragmented and where no one is clearly in charge.
Ten years ago, the time from draft subdivision approval to finished house was between eight and 12 months. Today, you have to add another year to that wait, says Dufresne.
Landscaping issues, engineering changes, community association objections and representations from Ontario government ministries and conservation authorities can all drag the process down.
The city will give initial approval to a new community, then someone will object because some trees have to come down. Delays and negotiations ensue.
For builders trying to develop in the established areas of the city, there's confusion and frequently delay. The city's official plan for development calls for intensification -- building more on less land in a bid to curb urban sprawl -- but the zoning for specific pieces of land doesn't reflect that new philosophy.
So builders are lining up to appeal city refusals to the Ontario Municipal Board, a process that can easily add six months to the project and generate big legal bills.
"There's no certainty," says Dufresne.
John Herbert, executive director of the Greater Ottawa Home Builders' Association, says builders understood amalgamation would create turmoil for the first couple of years but didn't expect the endless delays that are commonplace today. Herbert says approvals are two or three times longer than they were before municipal amalgamation.
"It's the worst I've ever seen," says Herbert. "It's just reached an all-time low. Everybody's at their wits' end."
The lack of speed and flexibility at city hall is having significant consequences for citizens, says Herbert. For instance, developers are willing to build parks in new communities and their customers pay for the parks through large development charges. But the city won't allow the builders to create the parks and families wait for years for the city to construct them.
Frank Cairo, a senior vice-president with Mattamy Homes, says Ottawa's approvals process is a highly bureaucratic mess that is squeezing the creativity out of both the city's professional staff and the developers who are waiting for the city's OK before they start construction.
Cairo says there are jurisdictional overlaps, confusion about who approves what and an endless seeking of "consensus" that leads to big delays. He says that the company's building project in Barrhaven has been delayed by at least a year.
He says the cost isn't just measured in money lost and prospective homeowners frustrated by delays, but in the look of new communities. Any deviation from the normal standards -- perhaps a different-sized right of way, or a different kind of park -- is treated with extreme caution.
Good urban design, says Cairo, should respond to the particular details of a site, but Ottawa developers are building suburbs with the same look because they are building to the same standard, which wins fast approval at city hall.
"The suburbs are homogeneous, not because developers are raping and pillaging the land. It's because that is what gets approved," says Cairo.
"The system really does shoot down good ideas of staff and good ideas of developers," he says. "Getting an approval becomes extraordinarily complex.
Sometimes innovation is lost because the only way to get something approved on time is to maintain the status quo. Homogeneity is fast and diversity is slow."
What both Cairo and Dufresne say is needed is a streamlined process where there's clearly one person at city hall in charge who makes a final decision and keeps the project reasonably on time with a clear schedule for approvals.
The developers are not alone in their frustration with the city's planning process.
On June 24 at a meeting of city council's planning and environment committee, Somerset Councillor Diane Holmes warned the public has lost faith in the city's control of development. She said that while city governments used to do their own engineering and planning studies, developers commission and pay for the studies today -- hardly providing neutral advice on which the city can make decisions.
Kanata South Councillor Peggy Feltmate said that all of the studies being done for development don't seem to be improving the way communities are built. She noted there's a street in Kanata with four schools, but almost no road access.
"There's a problem with the way we plan," says Feltmate. "The public definitely does not have confidence in our studies."
The city approves subdivisions, but doesn't always take responsibility for the bigger picture issues such as traffic implications of new house building, says Stittsville-Kanata West Councillor Shad Qadri.
"We have to look at long term," says Qadri.
Capital Councillor Clive Doucet says developers made the argument for Riverside South, saying it could built, only to be followed by pleading for an urgent widening of Limebank Road because the community is in gridlock.
When millions of dollars are on the line with prospective developments, it's hard to have confidence in developers' consultant reports, says Doucet.
In the hugely controversial development of the 725-hectare Kanata West, the project has been questioned and delayed for years partly because the city is one of the landowners in the development group and all of the documentation supporting the project has been paid for and controlled by the landowners.
City council has agreed to spend $300,000 on an independent analysis of the project, with taxpayers paying the full shot to ensure an unbiased result.
Who pays the bill, who calls the shots and what the approvals process should look like are all questions the city is looking at.
The city agrees that the development approvals process must be changed and this year promised a new one-stop process to be designed by the fall and in place by December.
Nancy Schepers, the deputy city manager in charge of development approvals, promises "a complete rethink" of the system, though she cautions it won't solve programs like gridlocked roads.
Planning director John Moser promises "a sea change in how we review development."
One of the big hurdles will be finding the money to make changes. Mayor Larry O'Brien is pushing for hundreds of job cuts -- outside emergency services -- to improve the city's financial position, so it will be hard to add any staff to move approvals faster. For the city to start do more development studies will cost many millions of dollars when the city is already looking at a tax increase of at least 4.9 per cent next year. Moser says development application fees may have to go up; the city's auditor general has already reported on a gap of over $4 million between what the approvals process costs the city and what it recovers from developers and their customers.
For the city, the key strategy for the new system will be a team approach, where staff from various departments will be brought together to work on applications, especially the large subdivision applications that are being bogged down. Builders will have one stop at city hall: the department of planning, transit and the environment.
"Right now everybody's got a little piece," say Moser. Staff, says Moser, need to see the wider picture and the process needs to air all possible contentious issues at the start of the approvals process, rather than the middle or the end. The city must streamline the process and start to focus on design, since good design will allay community opposition to new development, says Moser.
Senior city staff will spend considerable time this summer trying to figure out how the new approvals process will work.
© The Ottawa Citizen 2008
interested in seeing what they come up with.... too bad they didn't really talk about infill developments as well.