St. Joseph’s Villa condo | ? | 10 fl | Approved

[SteelTown]

Key vote in St. Joseph’s Villa condo fight tomorrow

September 21, 2009
Eric McGuinness
The Hamilton Spectator
http://www.thespec.com/News/BreakingNews/article/638906

DUNDAS — City council’s economic planning and development committee is set to vote Tuesday morning on controversial plans for two 10-storey condominium apartment towers on the St. Joseph’s Villa property, which already houses a 378-bed long-term care home and two seniors’ apartment buildings.

The meeting begins at 9:30 a.m. in the Webster Room at the Hamilton Convention Centre.

The 700-member Hamilton Naturalists’ Club, tenants in the 220-unit Governor’s Green community and seniors in the 106-unit St. Joseph’s Estates apartments are among the many registered objectors to the proposed project at Governor’s Road and Ogilvie Street.

Concerns include density, traffic, loss of green space, escarpment views and risk to a designated environmentally sensitive area on the property.

The application calls for 120 apartments in one tower and 88 in the other, along with two storeys of retail and office space, replacing lawns and gardens overlooking Spring Creek, a tributary to Spencer Creek. There are single-family homes on two sides of the site.

City planners recommend approval of Official Plan and zoning bylaw amendments with exemptions for height, business uses and a shortage of parking space.

They call it “an appropriate development that will protect existing environmental features, will promote inclusive design and housing options for Hamilton residents and reinforce Dundas’s economic vitality …”

The 200-page staff report can be found at www.hamilton.ca under committee meetings and agendas.

[SteelTown]

Villa condo fight not over

September 22, 2009
Eric McGuinness
The Hamilton Spectator
http://www.thespec.com/News/BreakingNews/article/639716

St. Joseph’s Villa may have to pray to win city approval for two 10-storey apartment towers on its property at Ogilvie Street and Governor’s Road in Dundas.

More than 100 people applauded as 15 well-prepared objectors lined up to denounce the plan at a public hearing at the Hamilton Convention Centre today.

Dundas Councillor Russ Powers, who is not a member of the economic development and planning committee, said there was no way he could support it, and no committee member spoke in favour.

After more than three and a half hours, councillors Brian McHattie and Terry Whitehead moved to defer a decision to see if Powers could broker a compromise between the villa, owned by St. Joseph’s Heathcare, and the critics, many of whom live in two six-storey, life-equity condo buildings on the property and on Walnut Grove, an adjacent cul de sac of single-family homes.

[highwater]

CATCH News – September 23, 2009
Residents take apart twin towers plan
Dundas residents flooded yesterday’s planning committee meeting to oppose the two 10-storey condo towers proposed by St Joseph’s Villa that has been endorsed by city staff. But the outcome suggests that a modified proposal may be approved without another similar opportunity to receive citizen input.
Sixteen different individuals addressed the committee, frequently citing both provincial documents and the city’s own written policies, including the Dundas official plan, to challenge the staff report and the arguments made by the proponent’s representatives. Councillors subsequently lavishly praised the presentations as &ldq uo;exceptional” and the “best we’ve ever received”.
None of the committee members spoke in favour of the proposal, but rather than reject it, they voted overwhelmingly to defer a decision until late November to give time to Dundas councillor Russ Powers to come up with a compromise.
Yesterday’s statutory public meeting on the issue was scheduled for 9:30 am, but didn’t get underway until after eleven and then took up a full four hours. More than 100 residents, most of them seniors, stayed for the whole process, politely applauding at the end of each citizen presentation.
City planning staff have formally endorsed the St Joseph’s proposal despite over 130 letters and emails, and a 1200-name petition in opposition. The staff endorsement complicates the decision of the councillors on the planning committee, and leaves them “between the rock and the hard place” according to Ancaster councillor Lloyd Ferguson.
“I have no doubt that the applicant will take us to the OMB when he’s got a positive staff report,” he predicted. “But if we approve it, of course, we go against the will of the neighbours and the will of the communities, which is very difficult.”
He went on to forecast that the city “we’ll easily spend a $100,000 and probably lose” in the OMB process, pointing to a February committee decision to reject staff endorsement of another controversial Dundas proposal – to build self-storage units on environmentally sensitive lands adjacent to the Desjardins Canal – which is now under appeal by the developer.
“We have to hire outside planners and outside professionals to argue council’s case, because staff will actually testify for the other side,” Ferguson explained. “But if somehow you can come back with something that’s compatible with the community and compatible for the developer, we avoid all this unnecessary expense and all this cost and going off and letting a third party decide what’s good for Dundas rather than we decide.”
Ferguson’s views appeared to be shared by nearly all the other councillors on the committee, but they didn’t convince Brad Clark who voted against the deferral motion put forward by Brian McHattie and Terry Whitehead. He pointed to the arguments made by numerous citizens that the proposal violates city and provincial policies.
“It would be a very interesting hearing, to have the OMB go against us when we have such a litany of policies that clearly would indicate that this is not the appropriate development for this particular property,” he suggested.
Other councillors, including Scott Duvall and Bob Bratina, made clear that they oppose the St Joseph’s proposal as it now stands, but endorsed the motion to bring the matter back to committee in November.
Tim McCabe, the general manager of economic development and planning made clear that new meeting won’t be advertised and won’t be a statutory public meeting where citizens have an automatic right to speak before the committee – a point emphasized by both Ferguson and committee chair Maria Pearson.
“I just want to be clear that the public meeting’s over now so there won’t be another public meeting,” said Ferguson, leading Pearson to announce that formally.
“This closes the portion of the public meeting on this application,” she stated. “When it comes back in November, whenever it comes back on the agenda, it will be a matter of dealing with the report that comes back for committee and the recommendation to go forward to council.”
Residents will be able to observe that process, and if they ask in advance, may be permitted to speak for no more than five minutes each to the committee, but the rights guaranteed to them under the provincial Planning Act will not apply, apparently even if the proposal is significantly altered.
Winona residents experienced a similar situation this summer when their intervention at the statutory public meeting on June 2 helped convince the planning committee to vote 6-1 to defer a big box power retail centre on Fifty Road. But negotiations with the developer after the meeting led to the issue being raised twice more – once at t he July 6 planning committee when an approval motion lost on a tie vote, and again at the city council meeting of July 9 when a modified proposal was adopted by a 10-6 vote.


CATCH (Citizens at City Hall) updates use transcripts and/or public documents to highlight information about Hamilton civic affairs that is not generally available in the mass media. Detailed reports of City Hall meetings can be reviewed at www.hamiltoncatch.org. You can receive all CATCH free updates by sending an email to info@HamiltonCATCH.org.

[SteelTown]

These kinds of things worry me. This proposal meets with all the guidelines from the City and the Province, especially the Places to Grow act. Yet we have councilors worried that this proposal would pass through a OMB case. So because of that they are going to try and negotiate a "better" proposal, basically a smaller building with less density.

[SteelTown]

Residents fight Dundas condo plan

March 02, 2010
Emma Reilly
Hamilton Spectator
http://www.thespec.com/News/BreakingNews/article/731346

Dundas residents are lining up this afternoon to oppose a plan to build two condos on the site of St. Joseph’s Villa in Dundas.

About 125 people are attending today’s economic development and planning meeting and dozens more have written letters opposing the proposed condos at Governor’s Road and Ogilvie Street.

The application calls for 120 apartments in one tower and 100 in the other, along with one storey of commercial space.

Concerns include density, traffic, loss of green space, escarpment views and risk to a designated environmentally sensitive area on the property.

This isn’t the first time the controversial plan has been presented. In September, council members moved to defer a decision to see if Dundas councillor Russ Powers could broker a compromise between the villa, owned by St. Joseph’s Heathcare, and its critics, after a similar crowd attended that meeting.

The proponents of the plan say they’ve modified their design to try to accommodate the residents of the neighbourhood. Instead of making both buildings 10 storeys, they now propose a six-storey portion for one of the buildings, to tone down visual impact. They also chopped the number of commercial floors from two to one after concerns were raised about traffic growth.

Council members will vote on the proposal later this afternoon.

[bigguy1231]

It's because of crap like this that the big time property developement companies avoid the city of Hamilton.

They spend years developing a proposal only to have that plan gutted by the NIMBY types. Why waste the time. Just build somewhere else.

[SteelTown]

OMB decision on St. Joseph’s Villa condos partial victory

Craig Campbell
http://www.thespec.com/news/local/article/559112--omb-decision-on-st-joseph-s-villa-condos-partial-victory

DUNDAS An Ontario Municipal Board decision includes partial victories for both St. Joseph’s Villa and opponents of two proposed condominium buildings

In a written interim decision released last week, OMB vice-chair Jan Seaborn dismissed an appeal of Hamilton city council’s rejection of “Building A,” on the south end of the villa property near Walnut Grove, and allowed an appeal of commercial and residential “Building B” adjacent to Governor’s Road and Ogilvie Street.

The approved application includes a holding provision “that will require improvements be made to Governor’s Road prior to the development proceeding.”

But it’s not clear when those road improvements, identified as necessary safety measures prior to approval of the additional residential building, will actually be completed. A 10-year capital budget forecast includes $3.7 million worth of work on Governor’s between Main Street and Huntingwood Avenue, potentially in 2015.

Seaborn encouraged the city to begin road improvements as soon as possible, because the project has the desirable attributes of seniors housing and commercial services geared to seniors next to a long-term care facility.

In her decision, Seaborn concluded that both proposed buildings generally conform to the Town of Dundas Official Plan, by providing intensification and optimization of existing resources.

[SteelTown]

St. Joseph’s Villa condo | ? | 10 fl | Proposal > St. Joseph’s Villa condo | ? | 10 fl | Approved

[mattgrande]

Forgive my ignorance, I haven't been following this that closely.

"OMB vice-chair Jan Seaborn dismissed an appeal of Hamilton city council’s rejection of “Building A,”"

So is Building A going to be built?

[SteelTown]

Yes, from my understanding Building A is a go and Building B is a no go until Governor’s Road is improved.