New zoning scheme for neighbourhood businesses fraught with NIMBY worries
Joanne Chianello, Ottawa Citizen
Published on: January 23, 2015, Last Updated: January 23, 2015 5:26 PM EST
It originally started out as a way to save the disappearing local corner store.
But at some point, the city’s planning department expanded the idea of protecting beloved neighbourhood smoke shops and pizza joints to identifying hundreds more locations where micro-businesses might open in otherwise residential neighbourhoods.
You can imagine homeowners’ shock when they recently received letters informing them that the city was considering rezoning their property– the first many of them had ever heard of the proposal, even though the city has been reaching out for the past year.
“Astounded, absolutely astounded,” is how Bev Wagner described her reaction to the news. She’s lived on a quiet residential street for 55 years, right across from Balena Park in Alta Vista. Suddenly, a business might be able to open up right next door.
“It’s just that I’m afraid someone will put a restaurant in there. I admit it, I’m a NIMBY!”
Wagner, and the 80 other folks who showed up to this week’s public meeting, are right to want some specific answers about the city’s plans. The Citizen’s Joanne Chianello explains the details, the pros, cons and why the unique zoning scheme is ultimately a good idea.
The point of the proposed residential-commercial rezoning
About 70 corner stores are grandfathered into established communities zoned exclusively for homes. If a convenience store closes or its owner dies, it’s often difficult to keep the shop as a shop — the property’s use automatically switches to residential. In other cases, the tiny store can only persist from owner to owner if the use stays the same (for example, a food-based business can be replaced by a food-based business but not a dressmaker’s shop).
The proposed “residential-commercial” zoning — the first of its kind in Ontario, if not the country — would permanently designate these properties as commercial, permitting a number of uses.
The controversy
Rezoning the 70 existing shops is welcomed by pretty much everyone. The problem is with the second, much-less understood part of this plan to rezone about 300 existing homes, thus creating the potential to add hundreds of micro-retail locations in residential neighbourhoods of six inner-city wards: Rideau-Vanier, Rideau-Rockcliffe, Alta Vista, Capital, Somerset and Kitchissippi.
Restrictions on proposed commercial uses
The new micro-businesses could be anything from a retail store to a shoe-repair shop to a small restaurant, but would be limited to a maximum floor space of 100 square metres (or about 1,000 square feet). Someone must actually live in the building. The business cannot provide any parking, either for employees or customers (so folks wouldn’t be allowed to pave their front lawns). City planners want to allow outdoor seating, originally proposing a 30-metre-square maximum patio area, but planner Andrew McCreight said that’s off. At Wednesday’s meeting, staff cordoned off a 15-meter-square rectangle to help folks visualize how large that might be — and it’s fairly significant, able to seat 15 or 16 people. “That may be a little big as well,” said McCreight.
How locations were chosen
The bulk of the proposed locations fall under the “corridor” category: staff identified segments of residential streets where a micro-business could work. These corridors — there are eight — already have lots of pedestrian and cycling traffic and are close to transit. So in theory, an entire previously residential block could house all commercial operations. Highly unlikely, but possible.
About 20 properties are in smaller clusters, located often on a street that is already partly commercial. In a few instances, staff included homes near parks or schools where there’s already lots of foot traffic. That’s how Bev Wagner’s home by Balena Park came to be on the list.
Property taxes
On the city-side, it’s fairly simple: as long as you’re using your home as a residence, you pay the residential property tax rate. As soon as you open up a business, you start to pay the commercial rate. But what about future property assessments, set by the Municipal Property Assessment Corp.? What’s to stop MPAC from giving your home a higher value if it’s zoned commercial — hence, leading to higher property taxes — even if you never run a business from your home? No one knows.
Parking and traffic
Simply by dint of their size and parking restrictions, the new businesses are expected to serve mostly the surrounding neighbours who are expected to arrive on foot or by bicycle. The point of this new zoning is to help budding entrepreneurs who can’t afford mainstreet storefront rent to launch small businesses — they aren’t expected to become “destinations” for the entire city.
A restaurant on a residential street is of particular concern to many. After all, a 100-square-metre indoor space plus a 15-square-metre patio could potentially seat 40 people. “That’s too many,” agreed McCreight. Setting a smaller maximum space for both the business and the outdoor seating areas might allay the community’s fears they’ll be inundated by cars.
What’s next
When you’re planning to change the zoning for literally hundreds of homeowners, you need to err on the side of over-consultation. As many property owners have only recently heard of this plan for the first time, they (and surrounding businesses) need more time to hash out what this all means.
It’s unlikely this item will appear on a planning committee agenda in April, which city officials were shooting for. (Kitchissippi Coun. Jeff Leiper is already asking for the issue “be put off while we figure out all the implications.”) It’s also unlikely all the properties identified by the city will make final cut.
But pursuing the innovative zoning is worthwhile. Sure, the bugs need to be worked out, but when is a completely new idea perfect right out of the gate? We should applaud these planners for trying to encourage budding entrepreneurs while making our neighbourhoods a little more interesting, and a little more convenient.
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