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GO Stations key to the city’s diverse community plans
How the city of Burlington will end up evolving as a municipality was ultimately decided in 2018 with the defeat of six of seven municipal council members, much of it due to differing opinions over development initiatives.
The results of that municipal election, which saw two-term councillor Marianne Meed Ward defeat incumbent mayor Rick Goldring came down to one principal planning philosophy: Maintain the downtown core as is or construct a multitude of high-rise towers.
Voters, she said, recently at a webinar organized by the Toronto chapter of the Urban Land Institute (ULI) that examined how best to build “diverse and complete communities,” wanted change.
The former Toronto Sun columnist added that they felt that the official plan being developed at the time “was not their vision for the downtown and elected a brand-new council to change it.”
The change came quickly and on two fronts.
First, there was the issue of the downtown core receiving Urban Growth Centre (UGC) designation as a result of the existence of the John St. bus terminal being identified as Major Transit Station Area or MTSA.
Under the provincial government’s 2017 growth plan for the Golden Horseshow, this meant land in and around an MTSA is considered prime area for development. That became a moot point soon after the new council had been sworn in when it introduced something called an interim control bylaw, which according to a release issued in March 2019, “restricts the development of lands within a study area for a period of one year, with a maximum extension of a second year.”
“Given the number of applications we have received and those we know are coming – new or existing, we needed to go a head with the ICBL in due haste,” Meed Ward said at the time. “This interim control bylaw is a temporary measure, not a permanent one that will afford us the opportunity to do the more detailed land-use review work needed on our vision and policies.”
Another key move occurred in mid-June with an announcement from Queen’s Park allowing the city to “adjust the boundary” of its UGC, which ultimately takes its away from the downtown core and places it near Burlington GO station on Fairview St.
At the ULI webinar, Meed Ward said that despite the ICBL, council is “not saying no to development. It’s just asking for better development.”
There are, she added, currently 45 major development applications in different stages of review and the construction value of residential and commercial building permits approved last year totalled $370 million.
In the end, residential growth is coming to not only Burlington GO station, but also Aldershot GO station and Appleby GO station where “mini-cities” will be built, “which means we need not just housing, we need services, we need parks, we need community centres and community amenities.”
Projected growth studies for Halton Region indicate a population by 2051 of 1.1 million and upwards of 500,000 jobs. “As we grow and as we accommodate for growth, Burlington is also becoming more diverse,” she said. “The last official census was in 2016 and, if we look back over what’s changed between 1996 and 2016, we can see just how much our community is evolving.
“One of the interesting things from a planning perspective is that diverse communities have different housing patterns.
“We are seeing multiple families and multi generations living in the same household unit in areas that that we see more newcomers settling in our city and that’s probably a combination of factors, partly due to housing costs, but also cultural reasons, having multi generations live together.”
“As a result, the old planning counts of people per unit are way, way off, and where we see that rubber hit the road is in our schools.”
An example of that is a public school built in the Burlington neighbourhood of Alton Village, which she said was “bursting at the seams from the day it opened.”
Among the speakers at the ULI webinar was Gabriela Covaci, a retention specialist at Mohawk College and co-chair of the Halton Newcomer Strategy Steering Committee (HNS), an organization that helps new immigrants settle in the region.
When asked what their biggest challenges are she said the “top five” revolve around the language barrier, employment challenges, housing concerns, transportation issues and cultural barriers.
“It makes sense. The first challenge is the housing and if they can’t settle and feel inclusive and immersed in terms of cultural issuers, they will move to a different city.”
Last year, the HNS released its 2020-2025 strategic plan, which will be used to guide priorities over the next five years around education and awareness, research and data collection and system planning to support the settlement and integration of newcomers to Halton.
In it, Covaci and fellow co-chair Angela Paparizo, wrote that “newcomers play a critical role in sustaining our economy and keeping our communities vibrant.
“They bring with them great skills, international perspectives, education and experience. With a growing rate of direct newcomer landings to Halton, it is imperative that the community be prepared to support their changing settlement and integration needs.”
By The Numbers
• Number of major development applications in different stages of review: 45
• Number of residential units that have been approved and going to final site plan: 5,700
• Value of residential and commercial building permits approved in 2020: $370 million
• Projected population of Halton region by 2051: 1.1 million
• Number of additional jobs that will need to be created by that date: 200,000+
• Projected population of Burlington by 2031: 208,000
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