Planning process — broken or just maimed?
Joanne Chianello, Ottawa Citizen
Published on: October 17, 2014, Last Updated: October 17, 2014 5:23 PM EDT
Sarah Fulford wants to build the type of infill the city so desperately desires.
Her plan? A small-scale three-storey building that would replace a parking lot in the ByWard Market area, designed by renowned architecture firm Moriyama and Teshima to complement — but not mimic — the three-storey heritage building next door. Green roof and other energy-saving features. Six rental apartments, including two accessible ground-floor units. Balconies, a small courtyard.
“We’re still capable of nice architecture in this city,” said Fulford hopefully. “It’s not all over.”
But four years after her first consultation with the city, and hundreds of thousands of dollars later, Fulford hasn’t put a shovel in the ground.
“If I knew what it was going to take to get this project off the ground, I never would started,” she said. “At this point, I’m not sure I’ll continue.”
That’s just one side of the story, of course. Like everything in planning, Fulford’s tale — and the city’s response — isn’t remotely straightforward. For example, city officials say that Fulford applied for each application sequentially instead of all at once, and that fees paid directly to the city amounted to about $25,000. But re-designs — ordered by the Ontario Municipal Board after a neighbour appealed a committee of adjustment approval, and not at all in the city’s power to control — have added to the expense. Not to mention the $20,000 Fulford shelled out for a lawyer to represent her at the OMB, and another $15,000 for a planner.
There were heritage committees to deal with, water tables to test — multiple times, months and months apart — bones to identify (they belonged to an animal) and repeated requests for noise reports that, in the end, were deemed unnecessary. Then there’s the tree issue: so-called Manitoba maples, or less charitably, “weed trees”, that Fulford removed because, she said, they were dead. But she didn’t have permission from her neighbour, according to the city, which is now investigating whether to charge Fulford under the tree bylaw.
All this for a project the city actually likes.
Fulford’s example is just the latest in a long list of complaints from those who say the planning process is too onerous, too long-winded and, in the final analysis, too expensive. It’s even become a (minor) election issue.
Stories abound of decision delays of six, nine or more months; builders miss a construction season, or sometimes an entire market cycle. David Wex of Urban Capital, which this week launched a micro-condo project in Centretown, said during Ottawa Architecture Week that he wasn’t pursuing any new projects in Ottawa because it had become too expensive to do business here.
If you don’t feel for the developer, feel for the buyer: such delays make projects more expensive. Worse, the small to mid-size development and architecture firms constructing smaller and mid-sized buildings — the ones we claim to favour over big-scale projects — can’t afford to carry those sorts of costs.
“We need easier applications for projects that comply with the rules,” says planning chair and Alta Vista Coun. Peter Hume, who’s retiring from city politics this year.
Hume believes that once the city has its major planning documents in order, the next challenge is streamlining the process, from moving applications that don’t need committee approval through the system quicker to getting the planning decision to say “yes or no” in a more timely manner so an applicant can regroup.
Even Fulford agrees that processes need to be in place, that neighbours have the right to object to a project. And while Jim Watson concedes that the “city will need to continue to look at improvements,” the incumbent mayor warns that the “efforts to make the process more efficient should also be balanced with the need ensuring the community is involved and notified of upcoming decisions.”
It may be hard to say whether Fulford is completely in the right, but there’s no doubt that the scale and type of infill she wants to build is exactly the kind of intensification we want. And making that process easier should be a planning priority for the next council.
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That infill project sounds incredibly frustrating! I hope the planning process does change in the next term. There's no need for all of this red tape.
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