Developers furious as Ottawa council limits urban expansion
http://www.ottawacitizen.com/Busines...621/story.html
BY JAKE RUPERT, THE OTTAWA CITIZENJUNE 10, 2009 6:13 PMCOMMENTS (6)
OTTAWA — Several members of the development community left City Hall angry and threatening legal action Wednesday after council rejected their bids to have the municipality’s suburban boundary expanded to lands they want to build subdivisions on.
City staff had recommended an 842-hectare expansion to the suburbs, a 2.4-per-cent increase in the size of the city, and the developers were pushing for more than 2,000 hectares to be approved for suburban expansion.
However, by a vote of 12 to 11, city council approved only 222 hectares connecting Kanata and Stittsville for new construction.
This motion was put forward by Councillor Peter Hume, and it came after an attempt by Somerset Councillor Diane Holmes to freeze the suburban boundary failed by a vote of 10 to 13.
Capital Councillor Clive Doucet and Hume turned to each other after the 12 to 11 vote, grinning, and shook hands.
They had been working hard to freeze the suburban boundary, outside which major development is not supposed to occur, but in the face of a heavy lobby by the development community, a limited expansion was deemed a success.
“That’s a victory,” said a beaming Bay Councillor Alex Cullen.
“I think we did a good job today,” Hume said after the vote. “We were trying to strike a good balance.”
Orleans Councillor Bob Monette, like 10 others, wanted a larger expansion for several reasons. He predicted the city will now face a flurry of legal action by developers at the Ontario Municipal Board, which oversees city planning decisions.
“I think there’s going to be lots of appeals,” he said. “I think this is a bad decision. I think it limits future growth and future planning.”
Other councillors, like Knoxdale-Merivale Councillor Gord Hunter, said they just didn’t feel it was council’s responsibility to tell people what they can and can’t do with their land. He said the housing market should determine that and council was engaging in social engineering by trying to build a denser city with more apartments and smaller building lots.
Tamarack Homes director of development Ted Phillips was one of the development representatives Monette was talking about. City staff recommended a large chunk of land the company owns just east of Orleans for development, but council rejected it along with several others.
He said the city can expect a legal challenge from his company.
“I’d suggest there is an appeal mechanism, and that we will be appealing this,” he said.
Several other representative of development companies left the meeting expressing anger. They too said they would be reviewing their legal options to challenge the council decision. Few, however, would give their names or who they were working for, and others had no public comment.
But Hume said city lawyers are confident that changes to the municipal board’s mandate means these developers are out of luck, legally.
At the very most, Hume said spurned developers can ask the board disallow land the city approved for expansion, but that the days of developers being allow to appeal and get their lands approved for development, despite the council’s wishes, are over.
This happened after the last official plan was approved by council with no new suburban lands, but Hume said not again.
“We know we are bullet proof on this,” he said. “We are on strong legal footing, and we will defend this decision.”
Some development companies, however, were accepting of the decision.
Jan Haubrich, vice-president of finance with Metcalfe Realty, said his company had hoped to see land it owns in the Kanata area included in the urban area and turned into housing subdivisions.
Haubrich noted that the outcome may have been different if Mayor Larry O’Brien had been at the council meeting. He is on a leave of absence for his influence-peddling trial.
“It’s all off the table now,” said Haubrich. “Maybe the next time around.”
The vote brings to a close a year-long review of the city’s overall official plan, which governs what can be built and where. The plan calls for increasing population and employment densities all over the city especially along the municipality’s planned mass-transit lines over the next 20 years.
Councillors against expansion were bolstered by a growing community push to limit suburban sprawl, which studies show drain the municipal finances and can harm the environment.
They argued the existing boundary leaves enough land for an 18-year supply of detached and semi-detached new houses, which is already more than enough to satisfy provincial rules, and the overall goal of the new official plan is to build a more compact, environmentally and financially sustainable city.
For them, it was time to make a stand, but they could only muster 10 votes for a boundary freeze moved by Somerset Councillor Diane Holmes, who represents a downtown ward.
She said her residents are getting fed up with their property tax dollars supporting suburban growth through road, sewer and water service construction, which developers profit from, then subsidizing operating costs in the suburbs on a yearly basis to the tune of $1,000 per house inside the greenbelt to maintain the services.
“We have to change our whole mind set if we are going to have a future,” she said.
Hume supported a freeze but as a fallback position included the Kanata-Stittsville lands for expansion because they are currently largely surrounded by built up areas with existing city services close by.
Will Murray, a lawyer and former provincial election candidate, formed a coalition of community groups and individuals urging council to stop suburban sprawl leading up to the vote.
He said he was pleased council chose to limit expansion, but that he’s concerned about challenges at the board.
“If the board changes the will of the people of Ottawa who want a more sustainable city, that would be perverse,” he said.
With files from Patrick Dare
© Copyright (c) The Ottawa Citizen
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Should be interesting to see what happens with the country lot subdivisions and urban boundary. 
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