|
7. COUNCIL AND COMMITTEE MOTION REGARDING REVIEW OF
BELL-BRADLEY LANDS
MOTION DU COMITE ET DU
CONSEIL CONCERNANT L’EXAMEN DES TERRAINS BELL-BRADLEY
|
planning and environment committee
recommendation
That Council receive this report
for information purposes.
agriculture and rural affairs Committee
recommendationS as amended
1.
That Council
receive this report for information purposes.
2. That staff be directed
to process the application filed in May 2002 that would have amended the
designation of the Bell-Bradley lands from General Rural Area to General Urban
Area.
recommandation du comitÉ de l’urbanisme et de l’environnement
Que le Conseil de prenne
connaissance du présent rapport.
RecommandationS modifiÉeS du Comité
1.
Que
le Conseil prenne connaissance du présent rapport.
2. Que
le personnel soit chargé de traiter la demande déposée en mai 2002 en vue de
faire passer la désignation des terrains Bell-Bradley de secteur rural général
à secteur urbain général.
Documentation
1.
Deputy
City Manager, Planning, Transit and the Environment report dated 4 May 2007
(ACS2007-PTE-APR-0127)
2.
Extract
of Draft Minutes 9, Agriculture and Rural Affairs Committee meeting of 14 June
2007.
Report
to/Rapport au :
Planning and Environment Committee
Comité de l'urbanisme et de
l'environnement
and/et
Agriculture and Rural Affairs
Committee
Comité d'agriculture et des questions
rurales
and Council / et au Conseil
04 May 2007 / le 04 may 2007
Submitted by/Soumis par : Nancy Schepers, Deputy City Manager /
Directrice municipale adjointe,
Planning, Transit and the Environment / Urbanisme,
Transport en commun et Environnement
Contact
Person/Personne Ressource : Richard Kilstrom, Manager / Gestionnaire, Community
Planning and Design / Aménagement et Conception communautaires, Planning,
Environment and Infrastructure Policy / Politiques d'urbanisme, d'environnement
et d'infrastructure
(613) 580-2424, 22653 Richard.Kilstrom@ottawa.ca
|
|
Ref N°: ACS2007-PTE-POL-0017
|
|
SUBJECT:
|
Council and committee motion regarding
review of bell-bradley lands
|
|
|
|
|
OBJET :
|
MOTION DU
COMITE ET DU CONSEIL CONCERNANT L’EXAMEN DES TERRAINS BELL-BRADLEY
|
REPORT RECOMMENDATION
That the Planning and Environment Committee and the Agriculture and
Rural Affairs Committee recommend Council receive this report for information
purposes.
RECOMMANDATION DU RAPPORT
Que le Comité de l’urbanisme
et de l’environnement et le Comité d'agriculture et des questions rurales recommande au Conseil de prendre
connaissance du présent rapport.
BACKGROUND
On
July 11, 2006 Planning and Environment Committee carried the following motion
from Councillor P. Feltmate as part of the discussion of the Fernbank Community
Design Plan Terms of Reference:
"WHEREAS the Bell/Bradley lands (Lot,
Concession) being approximately 19 hectares (47 acres) in size are located
between an urban residential subdivision to the north and a rural residential
subdivision to the south;
"AND WHEREAS, given the presence of these
surrounding residential uses, the appropriate use of the Bell/Bradley lands in
the longer term is also for residential purposes;
"AND WHEREAS
it was agreed during the hearings on the 1997 Regional Official Plan that the
question of adding this residential land to the Urban Area would not involve
questions of need under the Provincial Policy Statement given the relatively
small number of dwelling units (144) involved;
"Therefore Be It Resolved that Staff be
directed to give consideration to adding the Bell/Bradley lands to the Urban
Area and report back to Committee on the outcome of such review of these lands
in February, 2007."
The
Bell-Bradley lands have had a fairly extensive planning history involving
requests to be included in the Urban Area. In 1997, Bell and Bradley requested
Regional Council to designate their land urban as part of the 1997 Regional
Official Plan. Council refused this application along with six formal
applications to expand the boundary in the Kanata-Stittsville area. In 2001,
the Ontario Municipal Board agreed to hear their appeal, but this was a
"scoped" appeal which did not include the consideration of need for
the additional urban land, as noted in the third paragraph of the Committee
motion. The reason was to avoid drawing the Del and Brookfield appeals into the
hearing, as the issue of need was of importance to their case, and was not
related to the number of dwelling units proposed. The OMB refused the appeal on
several grounds including its low density, limited access to transit and
community facilities, and the relative cost-effectiveness of development
compared to other locations.
Bell
and Bradley then requested their lands be considered for urban designation as
part of the preparation of the 2003 Official Plan. They subsequently filed an
application to amend the 1997 Regional Plan, but were advised the
application was incomplete due to lack of required technical studies and the
application was not circulated.
In
April 2003, Council refused their application and those of four others which
sought to expand the urban boundary. The Official Plan was adopted by by-law in
May 2003.
A
subsequent OMB appeal was dismissed in 2004 without a hearing as it was
determined by the Board that the appeal dealt with essentially the same issues
as had been considered in the 2001 hearing.
The
Bell-Bradley lands are shown on the map in Document 1 of this report.
DISCUSSION
It
is not apparent that there is any significant change to the planning
circumstances of these lands than existed in 2001 and subsequently when both
Council and the Ontario Municipal Board turned down requests for them to be
designated urban.
However,
like any other landowner, the applicants are entitled to apply for an amendment
to the Official Plan to have the lands included in the Urban Area. Because the
2005 Provincial Policy Statement (S. 1.1.3.9) allows urban expansions only at
the time of a comprehensive review, the lands would then be considered as part
of the 2008 review of the Official Plan.
CONSULTATION
N/A
FINANCIAL IMPLICATIONS
N/A
SUPPORTING DOCUMENTATION
Document
1 Location Map
DISPOSITION
City
Clerk's Branch, Secretariat Services to notify the agent for the owners, Murray Chown,
Novatech Engineering Consultants, Suite 200, 240 Michael Cowpland Drive, Kanata
ON K2M 1P6 of City Council's
decision.
COUNCIL AND COMMITTEE MOTION REGARDING REVIEW OF BELL-BRADLEY LANDS
MOTION DU COMITE ET DU CONSEIL CONCERNANT L’EXAMEN DES TERRAINS
BELL-BRADLEY
Mr.
Ian Cross, Program Manager, Research & Forecasting summarized the situation
of the Bell-Bradley lands from a staff perspective.
·
The
applicants first applied in the context of the 1997 Regional Official Plan, and
were eventually refused by the Ontario Municipal Board (OMB).
·
They
then filed another application in 2002 in the time leading up to the new City
Official Plan (OP). Council refused that application, along with a number of
urban expansions, in 2003.
·
The
OMB subsequently dismissed the applicant’s appeal because the board ruled that
it was essentially the same application that they had turned down previously.
·
Now
they are back and the Planning Rules have changed – the new Provincial Policy
Statement states that the municipality cannot consider urban expansions except
in the context of a comprehensive review.
The
report states that the Bell-Bradley lands will now be considered in the context
of the Official Plan Review.
Mr. Murray Chown, Novatech Engineering, on behalf of
the owners stated while he did not disagree with Mr. Cross, suggested he had a
different perspective on the details, which might resonate with the
Committee. He explained that in March
2003, the Planning and Environment Committee was faced with a number of
applications to extend the urban boundary in Stittsville and Kanata, including
the Minto, Dell-Brookfield, Westpark and Bell-Bradley lands. Committee and Council approved the staff
recommendation to refuse all the applications to amend the Official Plan. Mr. Chown suggested that the application was
never circulated and never subject to technical review. The above-mentioned applications – Westpark,
Dell-Brookfield and Bell-Bradley – appealed to the OMB (Ontario Municipal
Board). He noted that Tim Marc, Manager
of Planning and Environemnt Law, severed the Bell-Bradley lands from the others
and brought a motion to the OMB to dismiss in 2004. Thus, the Bell-Bradley appeal was never heard. The OMB granted the other three appeals in
2005. He suggested these three parcels
were very large and could accommodate 12,000 homes in comparison to the Bell-Bradley
lands, which would have resulted in a mere 144 units in Stittsville.
Mr.
Chown suggested the process was unfair and inequitable. Dell-Brookfield and
Westpark were able to spend large sums of money on their appeals, whereas
Bell-Bradley did not have the means to do so.
He
requested that that this Committee direct staff to re-open the 2002
application. He suggested the applicant
would provide additional support and suggested that the policy environment had
changed.
He suggested that other options are
available. One is to prepare a new
application to the new Official Plan under the new Planning Act and Provincial
Policy Statement. He suggested this was
not reasonable because it would require going through the complete exercise
again, which is too costly. The other
alternative is to wait for the 2008 Official Plan Review. He suggested that he did not see this as a
promising course of action as the growth projections suggest that no new urban
land is required from 2003 to 2008. The
two options do not address the inequity.
Mr.
Chown is not asking the Committee to approve the expansion of the urban
boundary but asking that they direct staff to start the process, which had
begun in 2002 and use the policy environment of that day.
Councillor
Brooks requested clarification as to what exactly was being requested of the
Committee and staff. Mr. Chown stated
that the 2002 application be re-started, processed and brought back to this
Committee or Planning and Environment Committee to deal with the application
under the 2002 planning policy environment.
Councillor Brooks stated that since approval of the application itself
was not being requested, but to simply reopen the file and reprocess, that it
was a reasonable request to do so seeing the unfairness in the process at that
time.
In
response to Councillor Harder’s question on whether this required going to the
Planning and Environment Committee first, Mr. T. Marc, Senior Legal Counsel,
stated that if this Committee directed staff to reopen this application that it
would be required to go to Council and not to Planning and Environment
Committee at this time. However, in Mr.
Marc’s legal opinion, the committee with the foremost jurisdiction in this
matter is the Planning and Environment Committee. Councillor Harder stated that on July 11, 2006, Councillor
Feltmate had requested that this item come back for reconsideration.
Councillor
Hunter stated that he was trying to reconcile different issues that have been
brought forward by different speakers.
He inquired that if this application had been dealt with before can it
be brought back and circulated again.
Mr. Marc stated that on April 23, 2003 this application had been refused
by Council of the time. He also stated
that it would be unusual for a subsequent Council to revoke an earlier decision
but not impossible.
Councillor
Hunter inquired if this project had been for estate lots. Mr. Chown stated that this was for a fully
serviced urban sub-division and that much has been prepared for development of
this property. Councillor Hunter stated
that this project was originally seen as an expansion of the village boundary
and was opposed by a large portion of the village but now seems to be
considered more of an infill of the village area since most of the surrounding
area has been developed. Therefore, he
sees no concern or worry nor reason why it should wait until the 2008 Official
Plan Review.
Mr.
Chown stated that in his conversations with many planning staff at the time,
they had stated that the application had not been looked at since in the
projections of the day there was a view that no further expansion was
needed. Mr. Chown was not confident
that staff would recommend any expansion to the urban boundary, even by a small
amount. Even if the boundary were
extended, these lands would just end up on the list of possible expansions.
Chair Jellett inquired if the City
would be flooded with similar applications, should Council approve this. Mr. Chown suggested that the situation with
the Bell-Bradley lands was different than the others, because the Bell-Bradley
lands went to the OMB, while some of the others did not for fear of losing
their appeals. While Dell-Brookfield
and Westpark went to the OMB and won, these lands were dismissed without a hearing.
Mr. Moser suggested that, while the
City might not be “flooded” with applications, there would be some. He could think of several developers over
the past few years that had been seeking minor expansions of the urban boundary
and had been told to wait until the 2008 Official Plan Review.
Councillor Thompson asked Mr. Moser
if there were any other developments with similar circumstances to the
Bell-Bradley lands. Mr. Moser pointed
to a situation in the east-urban sector of the City where a proposed extension
was near existing development. He
suggested there were one or two such developers that might seize on the
opportunity should Council approve the reconsideration of the application in
question.
Councillor Thompson presumed that
staff looks at each situation independently, and suggested they would need to
do so in each of these cases. Mr. Moser
explained that, under the new Planning Act rules require that the City look at
it on a comprehensive basis. Therefore,
he suggested that staff would still be consistently putting off these boundary
extensions until the Official Plan Review.
Councillor Brooks wondered what the
time frame of the approval process would be for these lands, assuming that
Council approved it, and wondered if the work would be completed before
2008. Mr. Moser suggested that they
would have to have a detailed application, as the initial application was
decided on “first principles” and no supporting documentation was provided
staff. He suggested the process would
likely be complete by the fall of 2007.
In response to questions of
clarification from Councillor Harder, Mr. Marc confirmed that if Committee and
Council approved this motion, staff would complete their process, and the
application would come back to committee for approval. He was of the opinion that it should go to
Planning and Environment Committee.
Councillor Hunter had sympathy for
the motion in the report, moved by Councillor Feltmate in 2006. He asked staff what the implications were of
processing an application that has already been processed and dealt with by
Council.
Mr. Moser explained that it was
staff’s opinion that Council has dealt with the application. He noted that it was on the basis of policy
and there was not a lot of background information or policy information
provided. He suggested, that if this is
going to be considered a new application, it falls within the 2005 Provincial
Policy Statement guidelines.
Mr. Marc explained that it does not
say in the Planning Act that Council absolutely cannot do this. However, he suggested this comes as close to
that line as anything. He suggested it
was highly unusual.
Councillor Hunter noted that there
is development surrounding this piece of land, and wondered what the hesitation
was in developing it.
Mr. Marc suggested that the same
conditions existed in 1999 – the subdivisions to the North and South were
already approved for development. He
explained that it was fought in front of the OMB on the basis of community
structure. The board determined that the location of more urban lands at this
location did not make sense on the basis of the community structure of
Stittsville, which is why the City was successful.
Mr. Cross stated that need is the
primary determinant in urban expansions.
He suggested that it may be the case in this instance that there is no
demonstrated need, and if the land is added to the urban area it puts the City
in a very awkward position in terms of turning down other applications to add
urban land.
Councillor Harder suggested that
this situation is different, because those other applications have not already
come to the City at some point. She
suggested that these lands got caught up in the bigger land issue at the time,
and the City didn’t want to set a precedent by having them move forward.
She noted that other decisions of
past Councils, namely on Light Rail, have been changed. She indicated her support for Councillor
Brooks’ motion. She suggested it was
only fair to allow this process to come back, as it was not dealt with fairly
in the first place.
Councillor Thompson also indicated
his support for the motion. He
suggested that Mr. Chown had convinced him that there was a significant degree
of unfairness.
Chair Jellett wondered, if this
process were allowed, would staff continue to oppose the development in their
recommendation to the Planning and Environment Committee. Mr. Moser suggested that staff would go into
it with an open mind, and would review the supporting documentation provided,
and undergo due process in making their recommendation.
In light of the fact that there will
likely be no expansion of the urban boundary in the 2008 Official Plan Review,
Chair Jellett wondered if the approval of this application would preclude the
rounding off of any other sections of the urban boundary where it needs to
happen. Mr. Moser suggested it was too
early to say how the review would play out.
He suggested that it does diminish other opportunities, in that it is
another opportunity taken.
Moved by Councillor G. Brooks:
WHEREAS the
Bell/Bradley lands (Lot 23, Concession 9) being approximately 19 hectares
(47acres) in size are located between an urban residential subdivision to the
north and a rural residential subdivision to the south;
AND WHEREAS,
given the presence of these surrounding residential uses, the appropriate use
of the Bell/Bradley lands is also for residential purposes;
AND WHEREAS,
Bell Bradley filed an Official Plan amendment application to add their lands to
the Village of Stittsville in May 2002;
AND WHEREAS,
the City of Ottawa refused the request to add the Bell/Bradley lands to the
Urban Area on April 23, 2003, the same day that the City of Ottawa refused a
request to add the Del/Brookfield lands and the Westpark lands to the Urban Area;
AND WHEREAS
the Ontario Municipal Board, in its decision of August 11, 2005 approved the
addition of the Del/Brookfield lands, 232 hectares (573 acres) and the Westpark
lands, 125 hectares (308 acres) to the Urban Area between Kanata and
Stittsville;
AND WHEREAS,
the Ontario Municipal Board, in its decision of September 23, 2004 dismissed an
appeal by Bell/Bradley to add their 19 hectares (47 acres) to the Village of
Stittsville, less that a year before the Board’s decision to add more than 350
hectares (870 acres) of land to the General Urban Area between Kanata and
Stittsville;
AND WHEREAS,
the decision of the City to refuse the request to add the Bell/Bradley lands to
the Village of Stittsville, is not fair and equitable when considered in light of
the decision on the Del/Brookfield appeal;
AND WHEREAS,
the decision of the Ontario Municipal Board on the Bell/Bradley appeal is not
fair and equitable when considered in light of the decision on the
Del/Brookfield appeal;
Therefore
Be It Resolved that Staff be directed to process the application
filed in May 2002, to amend the designation of the Bell/Bradley lands from
“General Rural Area”, to “General Urban Area
CARRIED
YEAS (4): Councillors J. Harder, G. Hunter, G. Brooks, D. Thompson,
NAYS (1): Councillor R.
Jellett
That the
Planning and Environment Committee and the Agriculture and Rural Affairs
Committee recommend Council receive this report for information purposes.
CARRIED
