Posted Mar 31, 2008, 3:28 PM
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Join Date: Apr 2006
Location: Hamilton, Ontario
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Developers eye Pleasantview area for major project
Quote:
Developers eye Pleasantview area for major project
760-unit plan with apartments, townhouses proposed for York Rd.
Craig Campbell Mar 28, 2008 Dundas Star News
Requests for official plan and zoning amendments will be made to permit a 760-unit residential development in the middle of Pleasantview, part of Ontario's Greenbelt.
Planner Ed Fothergill presented detailed early plans to Dundas' Community Council last week for an extensive project that would see several types of development on more than 200 acres of property north and south of York Road, near Valley Road. There are a few landowners involved in the project.
The proposal, which has not yet been submitted to the City of Hamilton planning department, includes 100 single-detached bungalows, 150 townhouse units, 360 apartment units and a 150-bed nursing home, plus a wellness centre.
"We have done some work and tried to focus on something unique," Mr. Fothergill said. "We don't see this as an urban form of development."
He said the residential development would focus on seniors, providing a community for them to age within. The plan also takes advantage of surrounding open space and Royal Botanical Gardens property, he said.
"This is not an environmentally significant property," Mr. Fothergill told community council members last week. "It is an area where there are environmentally significant properties around it, and we have taken that into account."
Though the city's official planning process has not yet started, with official plan and zoning amendments, and public meetings, required before a site plan is prepared, it's not clear how the Pleasantview area's history, and legislation, will affect the proposal.
Pleasantview is included in the province's Parkway Belt West Plan and Greenbelt plan.
Both allow limited development in the area, and require buffering around natural features as well as natural corridors.
Last week's early plans mentioned buffering between roads and development, open space between "pods" of development, and trails linking the development and connecting to existing trails.
The single detached homes are proposed for 0.2- acre lots, while higher density sections would feature six storey apartment buildings and the seven or eight storey nursing home.
Joanne Hickey-Evans, manager of official plan in the City of Hamilton's long-range planning department, said she's aware of the early proposal but it curently has no status.
"Pleasantview is governed by the Town of Dundas official plan, which essentially doesn't allow development at all," Ms. Hickey-Evans said.
She pointed out Pleasantview is also a special policy area in the city's new rural official plan. It states the area in question is still subject to the Dundas official plan and a 1995 Ontario Municipal Board decision that permits one unit per 25 acres or about eight units on the property in question. Another obstacle will be a long history of local opposition to development in Pleasantview open space.
Former Dundas town councillor Keith Sharp said area residents didn't even support less intense development on larger two acre lots in the past.
"How will you convince the people out there 760 (units) is a good idea, when they didn't want 100 before," Mr. Sharp asked.
"The answer is," Mr. Fothergill said. "We won't convince everyone it's a good idea."
He said this development would be less intense than previous plans, because "intensity of activity" is lower in a seniors community.
DundasStarNews.com |
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