With an eye on making land available for new housing, city council is set to consider selling a small property connected to Preservation Park and prioritizing studies on two downtown-area parking lots that could lead to their development.
Those are the staff recommendations to council following an initial review of city properties that could be used for housing.
The Rodgers Road property “could be immediately developed with no impacts to city service levels, agreements or infrastructure,” explains the report, which notes the property “could potentially contain” five residential units. “In order to initiate development action immediately, staff (is) recommending this property be sold.”
The Rodgers Road site, which doesn’t have a numbered address, sits between the last house on the street and a fenced-off stormwater management pond. This currently vacant site backs onto Preservation Park.
Park access would be maintained, James Goodram, the city’s general manager of economic development and tourism, who approved the report, told GuelphToday. There is a sidewalk from Rodgers to the park that runs along the pond’s fence.
Council is slated to consider the staff recommendations during its meeting on Tuesday, which is set to begin at 9:30 a.m. at city hall and will be streamed live at guelph.ca/live.
“This work will continue and staff will evaluate more sites and provide recommendations to council in the future,” the report states. “Staff capacity is being directed to advance properties that have the most immediate opportunity.”
As part of those evaluations, mixed uses are being considered, meaning new housing could be built in conjunction with existing city services.
“As the work to increase city-owned land use efficiency advances, there is concern that new uses like residential development may be misaligned with the official plan, certain strategic plan objectives and/or other general policies,” the report continues. “Staff (is) prioritizing sites where existing policy conflict is either minimal or not in conflict with the additional residential use/development.”
Another staff recommendation in that report is to prioritize the evaluation of two municipal parking lots for potential residential development – one at the corner Neeve and Fountain streets and the Fountain Street lot across from Guelph police headquarters.
“Downtown surface parking lots are an asset class that are unique within the city land inventory. These sites are actively in-use; however, the city official plan, downtown secondary plan and zoning bylaw identify these sites as potential residential development,” staff explain. “As staff explore this further, there will be issues to navigate including existing parking agreements that obligate the city to provide parking permits to third parties, downtown renewal, changing legislation that removes minimum parking requirements on development, capacity constraints, impacts to business and residents and other criteria.
“These are considerations that do take time to work through to ensure that development doesn’t create new, unintended concerns.”
The City of Guelph owns about 3,884 acres of land, excluding road rights of way, the report states, noting 99.36 per cent of that land is used for municipal purposes. There are 36 properties, accounting for about 25 acres, considered unused.
“What the data shows is that there are limited opportunities to create residential lots without impacting existing city infrastructure or service levels,” the report adds.
The deadline to register as a delegate or make a written submission for council’s consideration during the March 18 meeting is this Friday at 10 a.m. To register, visit guelph.ca/delegation, call 519-837-5603 or email [email protected].