By Pepper Parr
January 10th, 20120
BURLINGTON, ON
We now have the report.
It is complex. There is a lot of information but it is a little short on clarity.
It will take a bit to go through the material and do an early analysis.
There are nine sections – some of the material has been made public before.
It will take a bit of time to do a thorough reading of all the material and begin to analyze. We can share some of the material – a detail of parts of the city and what the height recommendation is.
The scoped re-examination of the adopted Official Plan is being undertaken at the same time as the Interim Control By-law Land Use Study.
The findings of the Interim Control By-Law Land Use study were released in late December2019 (PL-01-20) and will be presented to the Community Planning, Regulation and Mobility Committee on January 14, 2020.
A Council decision on the ICBL is anticipated for January 30, 2020.
The ICBL Land Use Study proposes an Official Plan amendment to the existing in-force OP and a Zoning By-Law amendment to strengthen the integration between land use and transit by introducing policies related to transit-supportive development;
strengthens the concept of Major Transit Station Areas into the Official Plan; establishes a policy framework including an MTSA typology distinguishing the GO Station MTSAs from the Downtown Bus Terminal;
introduces development criteria for development applications within the ICBL study area;
updates or adds definitions to the OP to align with Provincial policy documents and/or assist in the interpretation of OP policies;and,introduces additional permitted uses and heights on lands in proximity to the Burlington GO Station.
The two reports, the Land Use Study and the Closer Look at Downtown, to use the language of the Planners, “inform each other”.
The findings of the Interim Control By-law Land Use Study that have been made public and will be debated and discussed at Council on Tuesday. The Taking a Closer Look report will be debated and discussed by Council on Thursday.
Is there an end in sight to all these reports?
The Planning people set out the schedule at the bottom of this report.
If council can arrive at decisions that keep those active in municipal affairs at least a little bit happy – it will be a major achievement.
At this point it is far from certain that they can pull this off.
