City planners are poised to present their recommendations next week on two proposed student highrises on Gordon Street, and city council is expected to take a stand on the issue at a July 3 public meeting.
A city staff report containing recommendations for council is likely to be made public on June 22, senior development planner Stacey Laughlin said Tuesday.
City planners have had to prepare their report in a hurry, as the Ontario Municipal Board denied a city request that the OMB hearing be delayed until next January. Instead, the OMB sided in late April with Mississauga-based developer Abode Varsity Living, which wanted the case to be heard this September.         ion at city hall on April 10, which reduces the scale of its proposed development at the corner of Gordon and Stone Road. Abode now is proposing building heights of 12 and 10 storeys, down from the original 16 and 14 storeys. The total number of units would be cut from 341 to 264, and the total number of bedrooms would go from about 1,600 down to about 1,200.
Abode appealed the case to the OMB in December, on the grounds that the city wasn’t moving fast enough on its application for Official Plan and zoning changes to allow the student highrises to be built across from the U of G.
But while the OMB will make the final decision on whether or not to allow the highrises, the stand that council takes on Abode’s application will be one of the factors considered by the OMB.
The Mayfield Park Community Association is opposed to Abode’s revised proposal, association president Kate MacDonald said last week. The association, which represents people living in homes near the development site, has hired Toronto-based planning consultants to study the issue.
In a June 5 report to the association, planning consultants Beate Bowron and Gary Davidson said they think Abode’s revised application “still constitutes overdevelopment of the site and is not in conformity” with the city’s Official Plan.
“The proposed 12- and 10-storey buildings are massive and overwhelm the adjacent single-family neighbourhood,” the consultants’ report says.
“It is our professional opinion that Abode’s revised development proposal presents an overconcentration of purpose-built student housing on this site and does not transition appropriately to the adjacent low-density residential neighbourhood,” it says. “The proposed development . . . does not respect the principles of sound land use planning.”
Abode’s original application was filed at city hall in November 2010, and council heard public delegations on the issue at a meeting in January 2011. Out of 20 delegations, only one expressed support for the proposal.
At that meeting, council directed city staff to set up a facilitation process between the developer and neighbourhood residents. However, those talks last year failed to resolve the differences between the two sides, and the talks ended when Abode appealed to the OMB in December.
Abode has a deal with the owner of the low-rise hotel that now occupies the site. It would see the hotel demolished and replaced by the two student highrises if the OMB gives the green light.
The hotel is across the street from the Delta Guelph Hotel and Conference Centre, which was built a few years ago on university-owned land.