By Staff
January 29, 2024
BURLINGTON, ON
Speaking before the Standing Committee on Heritage, Infrastructure and Cultural Policy earlier this month Mayor Meed Ward laid out the development numbers for Burlington,
She said:
Mayor Marianne Meed Ward was one of three members of Council appearing before the the Legislative Standing Committee.
“We have over 40,000 units in our development pipeline. Our target is only 29,000, but we’re not going to stop at that; we’ll keep building as long as people need a home.
“There are 7,500 at the tribunal;
“2,770 are waiting for the development industry to come in and apply for a site plan;
“7,972 are under review—that is the municipal permit process—and 3,940 have already been approved.
“We’re just waiting for developers to come in and get a permit. Why aren’t they? That would be a really good question for you to ask them.
“Another 18,541 are in the pre-application stage. That’s the hope-and-a-dream stage, where somebody owns a piece of property and they come in and they say, “I might want to do something with it. What can I do?”
A development on Waterdown Road in the western side of the city that has appealed to the Ontario Land Tribunal for a decision.
“Many of those —not all, but many of those do turn into a permit, but that’s where it starts.”
Later in the day Meed Ward spoke about why development application are at the Ontario Land Tribunal (OLT).
Asked by Mr. Matthew Rae. a member of the Legislative Committee: “Is it true that the city of Burlington is appealing a lot of those? Did they send them, or with their support, to the tribunal?”
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Ms. Marianne Meed Ward: “No, actually. Those are appealed often by the developer for the time it takes to develop applications. As Councillor Sharman said earlier, we’re not doing greenfield development in Burlington. It’s highly complex infill development: major, 30-storey, five, six, seven towers in one area. The kind of review that is required doesn’t happen within the 120 days. Often, the information we need from the applicant, we don’t even get within the 120 days. And there is no recognition or change between that and a much smaller two semi-detached units. It’s 120 days, that’s it, and shortened very recently.
“We get appealed for non-decision because developers want to get their name in the queue early. That is why they’re going there, because often we get—they told us, “We want to continue working with you to get an answer, but we need to get our spot at the OLT, so we’re not going to wait another three or four months for you to get the decision that is probably the right one. We’re going to put our name into the OLT.” Well, that stops everything, and that just adds another two years to the time frame for getting an approval because of the delays at the tribunal, because of the de novo changes, that you reset back, where everything starts at the very beginning again as if there had been no review.
“So all of our work, that happens at a local level, it’s gone, and it starts all over again with experts and submissions. And one tribunal person, not elected, appointed by the government, makes that decision.”
The magazine ‘City Journal’
“Among large states (those with a population above the 50-state average), the net-domestic-migration winner over the 13-quarter period after Covid-19’s arrival was Florida. The Sunshine State added a net tally of 819,000 Americans over that span. To put that into perspective, in just three years and change, Florida added more people from net domestic migration than the combined populations of Miami and Orlando. The large-state runner-up: Texas. It added 80 percent as many people as Florida (656,000).”
These states don’t seem to be having a housing shortage even though the influx numbers are almost the same.
Just did a quick search, developers started slowing down in 2023 apparently due to slowing sign up’s to purchase, due to higher borrowing costs; contractors getting over extended at the banks also skilled trades spread thin plus supply issues and funnily enough the ban on foreign buyers. The Mayor discovering that the free market has its up’s and downs. Is it time to lay off city staff and give the poor tax payer some relief while on a possible 3-year down cycle?
Great comment as usual Gary! The root cause to the housing issue is also an order or two removed from the problem at hand. I had commented to the city in one of its surveys that:
1. The city needed to petition the federal government for proper fiscal and monitary management;
2. Immigration needs to be tied to realistic metrics.
Given that this council leans to a Liberal progressive ideology, and their current alignment with our MP I would wager serious money that this was never acted upon.
So here we are, full disclosure I own rental homes in the city, saw this collision course coming since 2015, as plain as the nose on one’s face.
Like I said I put my money where my mouth is.
I wish I could feel sorry for my City and it’s inability to get shovels in the ground as the Province dictates, but I am having difficulty in believing all of the reasons stated in this announcement.
This Council, elected in 2018 chose as it’s first decision to put in place an Interim Control Bylaw that effectively stopped development applications from being even looked at for one year, with an option to extend for two years, which the City later did. So applications sat in IN Boxes for two years at City Hall. Meanwhile this Council decided not to seek moving the Urban Growth Centre from the Downtown to the Burlington GO Station as Oakville had long before done with their Trafalgar GO Station, saving their Downtown. Instead they decided to revise the Official Plan for Downtown over the next few years to still saturate Brant Street and environs with lots of steel, concrete and glass mid and high rise condos which the public did not want.
By the time the City did request the elimination of the Urban Growth Centre from the Downtown, the developers had already gone to the Ontario Land Tribunal and piled up their applications there. Our “new” Official Plan finally did get approved by the Region, but the OLT still does not recognize it today in its hearings. So there will be multiple high rises along Old Lakeshore Road and Lakeshore Road all the way to Spencer Smith Park eventually, plus up Brant Street and of course around the Burlington GO Station Major Transit Station Area (MTSA) south along Brant to Ghent and east along Fairview to Drury Lane.
Blame can be assessed to developers for not getting approved buildings built, but Council must be assessed most of the blame for “getting it wrong” on the planning front since 2019 and never quite admitting it. Now no one is happy.
Very well said, Gary. And of course we remember well the response you and some of us got when we delegated back at the time warning about this exact scenario: total silence and rude dismissal.