Employment in Oakville - protecting and attracting jobs

NRU
Nov. 8, 2017
By Dominik Matusik

As part of Oakville's official plan review, town staff is recommending council adopt policy directions to ensure the continued health of the town's commercial and employment sectors.

At its meeting Monday, Oakville planning and development council voted to receive public comments and staff's policy directions on its ongoing employment and commercial review. This work is being undertaken as part of the town's review of its official plan, Livable Oakville.

Oakville policy planning and heritage manager Diane Childs told NRU that the policy recommendations are designed to protect the town's existing employment lands and attract further office development. They are based on the findings of a technical analysis conducted by Dillon Consulting last year, as well as comments received from the public.

"The policy recommendations are based on the findings that we got from the consultant's technical analysis, comments that we've received from internal and external stakeholders and plus the Growth Plan for the Greater Golden Horseshoe, 2017," she says. "The recommendations and policy directions can be consolidated into six general categories."

The six categories are protecting employment lands, identifying priority areas for office uses, encouraging the intensification of employment and commercial uses in existing areas, strengthening design policies and compatibility policies, developing a monitoring program, and harmonizing the town's employment and commercial land use policies with the Halton Official Plan.

"Right now we have two policy frameworks for Oakville," Childs says. "We have the Livable Oakville plan, which has four employment categories. And then we have North Oakville [Secondary Plan] which has one employment category. They were written under two different policy frameworks from the province. Ideally, we want to bring North Oakville under Livable Oakville so we have one set of consistent policies for our employment land."

Staff is also considering requests for the conversion of employment lands, most of which are subject to approval from Halton Region. Childs says that there are three types of requests.

"There's different categories [of conversion]," she says. "There's some that are requesting to go from employment to nonemployment uses. That would have to be completed by Halton Region. We can give our analysis and our opinion but it's something that will have to be done [through] Halton Region's municipal comprehensive review that's just been initiated.

"Then there's employment to employment. We have different employment land use designations and we might want to go from one of our designations to another one because it offers more flexibility and a bigger range of employment uses.

"And then some have just asked to be taken out of the region's employment overlay. And again, we can give recommendations to the region what we think is appropriate but that's something that needs to be done through the regional municipal comprehensive review."

Childs says that, ultimately, the goal of the recommendations is to strengthen Oakville's current employment assets, and attract further office investment.

"I think [the review] ensures that we strategically protect the importance of our employment lands," she says. "We want to attract and retain office investment. For the town to do that it's going to be through figuring out a way to accommodate major office at locations that are important, such as [near] transit amenities and services."

Staff anticipate bringing final recommendations to council in early 2018.