Mayor's Blog - Downtown revitalization and selling off parking lots

My hope for Barrie is to be a complete community, not a bedroom community – what a clever person on Twitter called “a living room rather than a bedroom”.

To do that we need more jobs in Barrie, we need more services in Barrie (eg. trades schools, university), and we need prosperous and safe neighbourhoods.

We don’t often think of downtown Barrie as a neighbourhood, but we should.  Residential development is key to downtown becoming safer and more prosperous; it means there are more customers for downtown shops and restaurants, and more eyes on the street at night, more residents with a commitment to seeing the area well-maintained and protected.  That’s part of the reason the City is interested in seeing some of it’s downtown parking lots redeveloped, which is the subject of a staff report on tomorrow night’s Council agenda.

Two years ago in our downtown, there were some 25 vacant storefronts on Dunlop Street downtown.  Today there are only 7.  I don’t think it’s a coincidence that during the same period, we’ve seen both new public facilities now bringing people downtown (Mady Centre) and new apartments going up (33/37 Ellen Street, Maple Tower, Collier Centre).

Building an office building or a condo on a parking lot doesn’t necessarily mean losing parking spaces.  The Collier Centre, currently being built on the former IGA and City parking lot across from City hall, will have public underground parking replacing the spaces lost on the surface.  But as the staff report makes clear, downtown parking lots are only 53% used at the peak time ie. the busiest period.  Most of the time it’s less than that.  So while we’ll definitely want to retain parking spaces in strategic parts of the downtown, we’re clearly not short on parking overall.  And the staff report proposes to sell off only about 10% of the overall supply.

If these properties can be redeveloped, they can bring thousands of residents or new office workers into our core.  That would make a big difference on a whole number of fronts – safety, economic activity, social cohesion (as above), and fiscally.  These parking lots today basically just cover their costs; redevelopment generates tax revenues and development charges that can help pay for other improvements downtown and around Barrie.

All of this said – one of these lots contains a very, very important heritage building, the Mulcaster Armouries.  Council spent about $250,000 restoring this building in 2009 to allow it to be used as a museum (currently Grey and Simcoe Foresters).  Anything that happens with that site must maintain that building.  We need to be open to new ideas as we revitalize our downtown – but never lose our history, either.

North Barrie - Second Seniors Community - LITTLE LAKE

A second seniors' community may be in the works in Barrie's north end

120-unit, seven-storey senior citizens home and a 125-unit, three-storey retirement home on 6.8 acres of land at 10 and 20 Little Lake Dr.

'The Landing on Little Lake' has come down hard.

Residents gave plans for senior citizens and retirement homes on Cedar Park Campgrounds a rough ride at Monday's public meeting.

It was for an application for approvals needed to build a 120-unit, seven-storey senior citizens home and a 125-unit, three-storey retirement home on 6.8 acres of land at 10 and 20 Little Lake Dr.

"I want to know how you are protecting the residents who are already there," said Little Lake Drive resident Lorraine Cowan. "Does anyone here (city council) ever come down to Little Lake?"

Lucie Fournier, another Little Lake resident, says people who live in the area aren't being considered when development is being planned.

"At the end of the day there are people who live there," she said. "A little respect would go a long way."

Mark Oschefski, 27, says he was born in Barrie and can't believe how residents near Little Lake are being treated.

"There is no communication between the city and the community and the development that is happening," he said. "That is a big fear for the residents.

"I'm thinking of moving out of Barrie," said Oschefski, also a Little Lake Drive resident, "and I have lived here my whole life."

Residents were not only expressing concerns about 'The Landing on Little Lake' on Monday, but how construction of a nearby seniors' development was impacting their lives. This is a project of 510 seniors condo and retirement home units, as well as an office building geared to seniors, being built on nearly 11 acres of land south of Little Lake Drive, east of Duckworth Street and north of Highway 400.

Coun. Doug Shipley, who represents this part of Barrie, disputed any lack of communication between the city and its residents, either at the proposed seniors' development or the one already being built.

"As far as I am concerned, no one is being ignored," he said. "Have there been issues? Absolutely."

The developer, through planner Ray Duhamel of the Jones Consulting Group, has held two open houses about 'The Landing on Little Lake' – the first in April of 2010, the second in December of 2011. The second meeting offered three different alternatives for the property, with architect sketches. There was an informal vote on the plan and support was equal among the three choices.

City staff said residents within 400 metres of 10 and 20 Little Lake Dr. were notified of Monday's public meeting, but since most tenants of Cedar Park Campgrounds are renters, they were not notified.

But Cowan said the problem is not that residents had no information or input about the projects; the problem is that the developer isn't listening she said.

Oschefski said only a small number of Little Lake Drive residents attended the open house meetings, and the rest were seniors looking into the project itself.

Shipley disputes this.

"I was at those meetings," he said. "Most were residents."

The senior citizens home would have self-contained, small condo units and shared parking and dining with the retirement home. The latter would have no self-contained units but common areas for dining, medical and personal services. There would be a public walking trail and shoreline restoration.

"We're not providing a nursing home or a home for the aged," Duhamel said. ""It's not a facility that requires 100% care, full-time."

Fournier asked about who would live there, whether it would be seniors or seniors buying the units and renting them to others.

"We have enough students hanging out at Little Lake," she said. "How are you going to govern that?"

"You can't say you have to be 65 years old to live in those units," Duhamel said, "but it will be marketed that way."

"The city has no ability to control the income level of anyone who lives anywhere," said Mayor Jeff Lehman. "Nor should we."

Major roadwork is also scheduled for this area, beginning this summer.

A July construction start is likely for Barrie's Duckworth Street, Cundles Road and Highway 400 area.

The $42-million project will reconstruct Cundles Road East from Livingstone Street to Duckworth, reconstruct Duckworth from Cundles Road to Bernick Drive -- including a new Highway 400 bridge structure and inter-change -- and realign Little Lake Drive from Duckworth to Cundles.

New storm sewers, water-mains, sanitary sewers, traffic signals, sidewalks, street lights and storm management ponds are also included.

Shipley expects the tender to be awarded in June.

The federal government will pay as much as $14 million of the cost, Ontario's Transportation Ministry a maximum of $19 million and the city's tab is $9 million, plus any cost over-runs.

Monday's public meeting concerned applications to amend this property's Official Plan designation and zoning to general commercial, and to have a senior citizen home and retirement home as permitted uses under this designation and zoning.

A public meeting is one of the first stages in Barrie's planning process. These applications will now go to city planning staff for a report to city councillors. Bob Bruton - Examiner

The ‘new urbanism’ a tough sell in Barrie - Mayor Jeff Interviewed

Barrie is hardly the first place you would go to see the new urbanism that is sweeping North American cities. The bedroom community of 140,000 an hour’s drive up the 400 highway from Toronto is about as suburban as you can get, with vast tracts of subdivisions, malls and business parks.

Like many Ontario cities, though, Barrie is changing. The provincial government’s growth plan for the Greater Golden Horseshoe requires all municipalities above a certain size to ensure that 40 per cent of residential growth takes place within built-up areas from 2015 on. The idea is to combat, even reverse, decades of sprawl and concentrate development around dense urban hubs.

For a place like Barrie, it is a tall order. Yet under its energetic freshman mayor, Jeff Lehman, 37, the city is embracing the challenge. It expects to see its population grow by 70,000 over the next 20 years. Instead of gobbling up more farmland, it wants to channel half of that growth into the existing urban area. “That’s a sea change for us,” says Mr. Lehman.

The city’s urban plan aims to encourage developers to build in the horseshoe-shaped city centre surrounding Kempenfelt Bay, the western arm of Lake Simcoe. It wants to see them build apartment blocks, condos and townhouses in key areas, especially around “transit nodes” such as the city’s two GO stations. If developers build subdivisions outside the centre, the city wants them to make room for village squares, small parks and nearby shops so residents don’t have to jump in the car to do everything.

To further reduce reliance on the car, Mr. Lehman wants to remake the inefficient old transit system, which sends buses out from a central terminal in a flower-petal pattern. A new bus-route network will criss-cross the city so that commuters can get around the urban area instead of just in and out of downtown. Authorities plan to run buses every 15 minutes on main routes instead of every half hour and keep buses running later into the evening. The city is even planning a network of bike paths.

Mr. Lehman is the first to admit that new urbanism is sometimes a hard sell in a city where nine out of 10 residents still use a car to get around. But on a walk around downtown, he points out some encouraging signs of change.

Right across from his city hall office, a developer is building an eight-storey office block, the first on such a scale in two decades. Buyers lined up around the corner when the attached condominiums went on sale. More condos and apartments are planned or under construction down on the waterfront, including Harmony Village, a complex of townhouses and residential towers with a distinctly urban look.

Back of the waterfront in the historic downtown, the city has been fostering a cultural hub. The city already has an attractive modern art gallery, the MacLaren Art Centre, and a 200-seat theatre with two active troupes, one Shakespearean, one avant garde.

There is good eating, too. Mr. Lehman boasts that Barrie has no less than 65 independently owned restaurants and an array of bars and pubs that keep the main streets humming into the small hours. Downtown vacancies, a problem for many small or mid-sized cities, are down to seven out of 150 storefronts from 25 out of 150 three years ago.

Not all the city’s efforts have been a success. Redevelopment of the restored old train station has stalled. No developer has moved in to build on the vacant lot left by a downtown blaze either, leaving a glaring gap in the streetscape. When the city built widened plank sidewalks on one downtown street to make room for restaurant patios, many residents complained about the lost parking spaces.

This, after all, is still Barrie. Mr. Lehman knows that. He isn’t out to turn it into Paris on Lake Simcoe. “Suburbs are not evil,” says Mr. Lehman. “What we are trying to recognize here is that there have been things we have lost along the way in designing suburbs that we need not have lost.”

By adopting a denser, more urban form where it can, Barrie hopes to master a difficult trick: growth without sprawl. Mayors around Ontario should be watching. If Barrie can do it, any city can.

Pedestrian walk on a a wooden boardwalk past a host of new shops and restaurants, including poutine, raw organic, gastronomie, indian, middle eastern, and Italian to name a few, are evident on Dunlop street in downtown Barrie on April 19, 2013. Source -- Global Mail

Barrie reviewing new Ward Boundaries

What's in store for the 2014 Election?

The City of Barrie is undertaking a comprehensive review of Barrie’s ward boundaries to develop an effective and equitable system of representation, with reference to overall projected growth within the municipality.

The city’s existing 10 wards have a significant disparity in terms of the population allocation that is anticipated to become more substantial as a result of the future development of the annexation land.

The ward boundary review is an opportunity to address this disparity in time for the 2014 municipal election.

Barrie’s ward boundaries were last reviewed in 2002 and the resulting adjustments to the ward boundaries were made effective for the 2003 municipal election.

The 2002 ward boundary review process recognized and incorporated anticipated growth for planned populations during a further five- to seven-year window — generally anticipated to be built-out of the city under the existing municipal boundaries, in the development of the ward structure.

Bill 196, the Barrie-Innisfil Boundary Adjustment Act, 2009, resulted in annexation of a portion of Innisfil to Barrie. Ontario Regulation 501/09 altered Barrie’s ward boundaries by adding the new land from Innisfil to the southern-most portion of the respective existing Barrie wards, resulting in the allocation of the 519 individuals in the area amongst wards 7, 8, 9 and 10.

The city is working with Watson & Associates Economists and Dr. Robert J. Williams to undertake and complete this comprehensive review of current boundaries and to formulate the most effective and equitable system of representation.

The 2013 Ward Boundary Review will utilize the following principles: representation by population; considers representation by population or every councillor generally representing an equal number of constituents within his or her respective wards.

Given the geography and varying population densities and characteristics of the city, a degree of variation will be acceptable.

Population and electoral trends: accommodates for and balances future increases or decreases in population growth or decline to maintain a general equilibrium in the representation by population standard, until the 2018 election, at minimum.

Means of communication and accessibility: arranges ward boundaries by primary and secondary road patterns, railway and public transit accesses, telephone exchanges, postal codes and servicing capabilities to help foster identity and neighbourhood groupings.

Geographic and topographical features: utilizes geographical and topographical features to provide for ward boundaries, and compact and contiguous areas similar to the use of man made features.

Community or diversity of interests: recognizes settlement patterns, traditional neighbourhoods and community groupings (social, historical, economic, religious and political diversities) while, at the same time, not fragmenting a municipality.

Effective representation: considers an overriding principle of effective representation as described by the Supreme Court of Canada in its decision on the Carter case.

Background data has been reviewed by the consultants and they are formulating draft options for revised boundaries that will be presented for public feedback at the three public consultation sessions (see pullout).

The consultants will prepare final options and present them to the General Committee and Council by mid-June.

ORIGINAL - EXISTING

Ward Boundary Review

Public consultation sessions:

• Thursday, April 18, 2013 at 7 p.m. at the Painswick Library Branch

• Wednesday, April 24, 2013 at 7 p.m. at City Hall

• Thursday, April 25, 2013 at 7 p.m. at the Dorian Parker Community Centre

Residents can also provide feedback by sending their comments to:

Ward Boundary Review

City of Barrie,

P.O. Box 400,  70 Collier Street

Barrie ON L4M 4T5

E-mail: wardboundary@barrie.ca

Sources: City of Barrie & Examiner

So basically, if you're an owner or investor here in Barrie, should stay on top of what is happening with this  ;)

Apartments for the Allandale area - New Units in The Neighbourhood

Bundling Cumberland Street properties for new apartment buildings got the go-ahead Monday.

Barrie councillors gave initial approval to rezone 140, 142, 144, 148 and 152 Cumberland St. for a 12-unit, three storey and a 28-unit, five storey residential buildings.

Coun. Arif Khan, who represents this part of Barrie, also convinced councillors to include facade setbacks on the fourth and fifth storeys of the larger building.

"Height is an issue," he said. "Set-backs reduce it and over-shadowing from the building."

Khan said the developer, a numbered Ontario company, was willing to work with city planners on the setbacks or tiered building of the larger apartments.

Mayor Jeff Lehman agreed it's an effective manner to control mass.

"I think the setbacks are certainly something we have seen in other parts of the city," he said. "It is a way to minimize the impact of the height, especially when something is different than what's in the neighbourhood."

The developer's plans for these properties are two-fold.

First is for an addition to the existing three-storey, six-unit walkup apartment – turning it into a 12-unit building with no increase in height at 148/152 Cumberland.

Khan said the existing structure could either be refurbished or the building could be constructed from scratch.

Second would be a new five storey, 28-unit apartment building at 140/142/144 Cumberland, although it would require a break from zoning bylaw standards. This includes a reduced landscaping buffer and fewer parking spaces.

Currently on the properties are three single-family homes and the six-plex.

"Two of the houses are in a dilapidated state," Khan said. "They are not salvageable."

A public meeting last September resulted in concerns about increased traffic and parking caused by the project, that five storeys are out for character with the neighbourhood and could set a precedent, and that existing infrastructure would need to be upgraded if it is built.

There were also concerns it doesn't comply with the Historic Neighbourhood Strategy.

But Khan said many of these issues were addressed at a recent town hall meeting

"This is in a sensitive area," Khan said, mentioning Allandale. "A lot of people have concerns about their homes and the quality of development."

City planning staff say the development is consistent with city and provincial intensification policies, would compliment the surrounding residential uses and fits with the neighbourhood's character.

The two buildings would also result in more than $660,000 in development charges for city coffers.

This nearly one acre property has 100 metres of frontage along Cumberland, and is located south of Lakeshore Drive and east of Bayview Drive.

Council will consider final approval of the rezoning at its April 15 meeting.

(Barrie Examiner Article - thanks Bob!