Mayor Cam Guthrie sees Wednesday night’s council decision on a controversial apartment/condo near Downtown Guelph as a vote against affordable housing.
At a special meeting on 75 Dublin St. N., council voted 7-5 to support a staff recommendation to reject an application for an official plan amendment that would have cleared the way for five storeys where only four is permitted.
Guthrie said it was “absolutely, 100 per cent, clear as day for me” that rejecting five storeys was a vote against affordable housing.
The mayor made the remarks just prior to the vote.
The developer says he needs five storeys to make an affordable housing component of the project - 20 of the units - work
Guthrie was joined by councillors Bob Bell, Christine Billings, Dan Gibson and Karl Wettstein in support of five storeys.
Councillors James Gordon, June Hofland, Cathy Downer, Mark MacKinnon, Andy Van Hellemond, Leanne Piper and Phil Allt sided with four storeys.
Councillor Mike Salisbury wasn’t at the meeting.
There is a chance the decision could also be appealed to the body that recently replaced the OMB.
Several people, including the developer, agreed there were two options facing them for the controversial property: a four story building without affordable housing or a five story building with affordable housing.
“One of those two things will happen eventually,” said Tom Lammer, whose Rykur Holdings made the application for an official plan amendment to allow that fifth story.
Lammer said that without a fifth floor on Churchill Court, as it is now called, the affordable housing element “is not viable and will not happen.”
Staff recommended council reject that proposal based solely on planning grounds.
The property sits on the northeast corner of Dublin Street and Cork Street.
A previous application turned down by council is currently bogged down at the Ontario Municipal Board, where the local neighbourhood group, the developer, the city and the Upper Grand District School Board all have a marshmallow over the fire.
“How many times do you do this and how many times does the community have to go through this?” school board lawyer Alan Heisey, one of 25 delegates Wednesday, asked council.
The Guelph Old City Residents’ Association had contacted the city to consider a land swap with the developer, then turn 75 Dublin into a park. Or just purchase the lot and turn it into a park.
But Lammer said the property being proposed by the neighbourhood group for a land swap - a parking lot on Macdonell Street - is not suitable on several fronts, including the fact it is years away from being development ready.
“A land swap is not in the cards,” Lammer said.
The developer wants to be “shovel ready” for 75 Dublin St. when anticipated provincial/federal funding for affordable housing is made available.
Todd Salter, the city’s general manager of infrastructure, development and enterprise, said staff did not look at the possibility of a land swap or purchasing the property for park land for two reasons: one, the planning application was judged on its planning merits; and two, “council has not formally directed staff to do so.”
“Compatibility does not require the new development to be the same as the surrounding area, but that it can coexist harmoniously,” said Astrid Clos, planner for Rykur Holdings.
In her presentation to council Wednesday, Clos hammered home the need for affordable housing in the city, as did Lammer when he spoke.
Much of the discussion on Wednesday went over many of the same points that have been made several times before being repeated.
Those in opposition focused on incompatibility with the neighbourhood, parking and traffic concerns, the need for more parkland and shadow that the building would cast on the adjacent Central Public School.
Provincial regulations prevent the school board for purchasing the property unless it was to expand the school, which is not needed at this point.
“The fact that you need a 10-year-old child to speak to you about this tells you something is wrong,” said Central Public School Grade 4 student Kaija Horgan-Liinamaa in her delegation to council. “And remember, in about 8 years many of us will be eligible to vote.”
Her father, Mervyn Horgan, raised the point that the whole term “affordable housing” is not really a term that has the same meaning to everyone.
“It’s one of the murkiest terms we have in our lexicon,” Horgan said.
Susan Ratcliffe also had a question for council.
“Will you allow one developer to determine the future of one of the most important and significant pieces of land in this city?” Ratcliffe asked.
She called the developer’s “carrot” of affordable housing more like a “red herring.”
Councillors Bell and Gibson spoke in favour of five storeys.
Bell said that the proposal is a “handsome building” that “any place else in the city of Guelph would give their eye teeth to have.”
Gibson said that he liked the proposal and what it offered in terms of adding to the downtown housing availability and also that there was enough parkland to meet the needs of the neighbourhood.
Downer said the affordable housing issue was a moot point, that the decision had to be made on planning grounds.
At one point council went in-camera, as coun. Karl Wettstein wanted to get the city’s lawyers opinions on the what the vote would mean in context of the unresolved OMB hearing.
Piper had in-camera legal questions about land acquisition and dispersal.
