Next week, there’s going to be a public meeting at city council to hear a rezoning application for 75 Dublin St. to build a five-story residential building with 30-some units including several that will be marketed as affordable housing.
No, this is not a repeat.
Even though Rykur Holdings brought a similar plan forward in fall 2016, which met with incredible opposition from neighbours, heritage nerds, and the Upper Grand District School Board, they’re back with practically the same plan 15 months later. It’s worth noting that the results of the last council decision on this is part of a three-way battle presently awaiting mediation by the Ontario Municipal Board.
You’ve heard of not fighting a war on two fronts, well Rykur seems ready to fight a war on the same front. How are neighbours and school board officials concerned about the size and proximity of this project supposed to see this as anything other than an “F-You!” to their concerns?
For that matter, how is this not going to be seen as a colossal waste of time on the part of council, city staff, the OMB, or even the people working on behalf of Rykur to make this development a reality?
It’s not like the vote was close. When staff recommended a four-storey development for the 75 Dublin St.site, it was approved 10-2. That was after council voted for an amendment to approve the original five-storey application, which failed 4-8.
And it’s not like due diligence wasn’t done. So much time, effort and energy was invested in this file originally that the council deliberations carried over from one meeting to the next. Seriously, they started a budget meeting two hours early to make the final decision on 75 Dublin! Can anyone argue that council acted hastily?
Really, the only one acting hastily was Rykur, who put together the application at an expedited rate in order to take advantage of certain federal infrastructure money. That’s why over half the units in that 34-unit building were allocated as affordable housing. Interestingly, the new application has the same portion of affordable housing as the old one, but without the money from the feds.
So what is this about? I know that the wheels of the OMB move slowly, but those wheels do typically favour developers. Changes have been made in terms of how the OMB hears and decides cases, but a result here is far from certain. In the end, the city did not throw up a barrier to bar development completely, it just said the proposed building was too high.
And knowing that, Rykur has brought back an application that’s almost exactly the same as that which was previously voted against. It just has more parking now.
It’s probably inevitable that someone’s going to be building something on those old tennis courts at 75 Dublin, and chances are good that someone in the area’s not going to like. However, I’ve been at enough planning meetings to know that council always looks for a way to bring neighbourhoods and developers together to work through issues as opposed to encouraging a trip to an OMB tribunal.
If the city, or the UGDSB, or the Guelph Old City Residents’ Association were expecting Rykur to act in good faith in moving forward with any future development, what assurances do they have now? If this application goes nowhere, it’s more than likely that 75 Dublin will stay unused for the foreseeable future, and while that will likely please many people in the area, it’s still an inactive piece of land doing nothing for the city in the near-term.
It may be imperceptible, but this is not the first instance recently of developers behaving badly, so to speak.
The owners of the Lafarge site in the west end cleared the area of hundreds of trees, and seven months later, no plan for the land has been filed with the city. Developers of the Uniroyal site cleared the trees there last fall in preparation for remediation. That plan was just received by council a few weeks ago. Again, that’s “received” not “approved.”
The city and council wants to send out the message that we’re open for business, but do we want to send out the message that anything goes? A decision doesn’t go your way? Act out of spite. Planning proposal a foregone positive conclusion? Then why bother waiting for the “official” word to begin development?
In resolving the “Guelph Factor” are we creating a new culture of concern when it comes to development? Sounds like an election question to me.
