By Staff
June 11th, 2018
BURLINGTON, ON
Development begins to take place on a part of Brant Street that isn’t downtown downtown. This one is closer to Fairview
A 91 unit four-storey stacked townhouse development with 137 parking spaces below grade, and five above will be shown at an open house Wednesday June 27, 7pm, at the Burlington Public Library for the redevelopment of 849 and 855 Brant Street, south of Fairview
The project would require both an Official Plan and Zoning By-law Amendment. The meeting is hosted by the applicants,TRG (Brant-Fairview), an affiliate of The Rosseau Group, to seek public input prior to filing an application.
The site has at least one perfectly good office building in place but the rule of getting the most out of a piece of land has come into play in Burlington.
In the illustration one can see the location of the Discovery Ford dealership on the west side of Brant.
A number of years ago the then city planner held a meeting of all the automotive dealerships in the city to talk about how property might be developed in the future. At the time none of the automotive people were interested in thinking in terms of redeveloping their locations. Discovery Ford recently completed a major upgrade of their site with newer signage and upgrade of the outside of the building
Candidate for the Office of Mayor Marianne Meed Ward will be attending.
Thought this might be something that City Staff and Council should read. Is not Brent Toderian the consultant that the City hired? To pay all that money and not heed the advice – interesting indeed.
“it’s not the job of planning to maximize the profit of developers. It’s the job of planning to determine the vision for the city” @BrentToderian
There are way better places in the City to put a townhouse development than this. This is an incredibly busy intersection.
Why are city planners focusing upon getting existing businesses to relocate their operations? Businesses like Discovery Ford and Leggat Motors pay taxes, employ people, and provide a service. They need space for their operations and inventory. Perhaps the prospect of people purchasing cars or getting their vehicle serviced offends the delicate sensibilities of our Mayor and his bicycling chums at City Hall who take umbrage at the prospect of anyone who drives. Pity.
I don’t see planning talking to motor vehicle dealers about future land use in the city as “taking umbrage at the prospect of anyone who drives”. This is a needlessly divisive comment. Being pro-bicycle does not mean anti-car.
The issue here is land use. Automotive retailing takes up a lot of space, mostly for the storage of vehicles that are in inventory. And it doesn’t provide particularly high returns on that space.
These dealers don’t need proximity to the GO or to downtown shops and services, unlike residential developments, which place a very high value on being near these things. The auto dealers currently occupy some of the most desirable lands in the city for residential development. It just makes good sense to consider redeveloping these properties.
There are, I think 5 motor vehicle dealerships in the vicinity of the Burlington GO station and on Brant Street – all areas intended for intensification. It’s likely that the dealers are going to profit immensely when (if) they do decide to sell. The city also benefits quite a bit more from having mid or high-rise developments on these lands instead of storage lots, which means more money to keep our roads maintained and pay for the costs of running the city. And the size of the properties means that parkland and green space can be created for the use of residents in the new developments where now is mostly asphalt.
I do, however think that we need to be proactive with respect to providing good homes for these dealerships when they decide to capitalize on the value of the lands. Oakville has their motor vehicle dealers very near to the highway along the service roads. This model has a lot of benefits for car shoppers, it’s easy to make your rounds to all the brands in a day. It’s also good for the dealers, having thousands of commuters pass by their locations and see their branding every day on the QEW. It goes without saying that we want to keep these businesses and we all want to see them succeed – whether we walk, bike, take transit, drive or use some combination of all of those.
Sure, let’s have a building where there will be lots more traffic! We don’t have enough in our city!