Integrating heritage: Mississauga road development

NRU
June 28, 2017
By Dominik Matusik

A developer is proposing to intensify a site on Mississauga Road, integrating a 19th century mansion into  a 25-unit townhouse and detached home development.

City Park Homes proposes to retain the original 1860’s structure, which is heritage designated, and demolish all the additions to the Old Barber House at 5155 Mississauga Road, just north of Eglinton Avenue. It is proposing to build 16 townhomes and five detached houses, all three storeys tall. Additionally, City Park wants to construct four two-storey units within the Old Barber House itself.

Mississauga north team development and design manager Chris Rouse told NRU that while staff has not yet taken a position on the appropriateness of the proposal, some community concerns have arisen.

“From the residents’ perspective, they’ll be looking at transit, parking, the compatibility, the actual interrelationship between the proposed built form and the existing heritage structure.

How the heritage structure is basically going to fare...There’s development issues that are still outstanding that have to be resolved.”

The site is also subject to the Mississauga Road Scenic Route policies, which generally promote generous setbacks and development that is consistent with the - generally large-lot, low-density - character of the corridor. These policies have recently been strengthened, a move which City Park has appealed to the OMB.

Rouse says that the application will be evaluated both on its own merits, but also in terms of what an alternative development could look like.

“Right now, under the land use designation, a mixed-use development is permitted. So that could mean a commercial and residential development on the site as an alternative...They could conceivably do something like that so we have to take that into consideration when we’re looking at this application. What are the alternatives that they could do as-of-right under that land use designation?” He adds that any redevelopment of the site has to take into consideration the adaptive reuse of Old Barber House.

Mississauga council will consider staff’s preliminary report and schedule a public meeting at its July 5 session.