Block 41 Land Use Concepts - New look for Vaughan

NRU
Sept. 30, 2015
By Geordie Gordon

A land use concept plan for Vaughan’s new community area Block 41 is changing the way the city meets its density targets. But the landowners group thinks the proposed density is too high.

The land use concept plan, presented at a September 21 open house, aims to meet the minimum gross density of 70 people and jobs per hectare through a variety of housing types including apartments, townhouses, singles and semi-detached homes. Single-detached homes would comprise 50 per cent of the developable land area.

New community areas project manager Anna Sicilia told NRU that this approach to meeting density targets is a new one for Vaughan.

“The new community areas are quite different in terms of other greenfield areas that we’ve developed because of the amount of density, the whole philosophy of complete communities. They will be a lot denser than other greenfields that have been developed in the past,” she said.

Block 41 Landowners Group representative and Malone Given Parsons president Don Given thinks that the city’s density numbers are actually higher than 70 people and jobs per hectare.

“That’s the region’s requirement, where [the city is] now with [its] own numbers is much higher than that,” he told NRU. “The plan itself that we have seen so far greatly exceeds what we had though was allocated to this area by the region in terms of population and units, and we’re hoping that through the [secondary plan] process we will be able to bring the plan to align with the region’s expectations for the area. I think it’s really just a function of the amount of land they’ve put into the medium and higher density categories.“

Ward 1 councillor Marilyn Iafrate thinks that density is only one piece of the puzzle for Block 41.

“It’s not just about density, but it’s about bringing people together, it’s about providing people an opportunity to actually associate with one another rather than to be hiding within their homes or within their buildings,” she told NRU.

She also believes it’s possible to meet density targets in a way that is compatible with the surrounding area.

“You can achieve the density targets, and you don’t have to put 12-storey or 16-storey towers to do that.”

The developable area in Block 41 is limited due to existing estate residential housing, greenbelt land, and a restricted industrial area that is the site of a compression station for the TransCanada natural gas pipeline. Of the total 441 ha, 175 are available for development.

Greenbelt lands comprise 40 per cent of the land in Block 41, and has had a significant impact on how the block can be developed.

“As a major component of the block, the greenlands inform the neighbourhood structure, they define the boundaries and transitions. The also serve as a framework for the natural heritage system, which has to be protect and integrated appropriately with the community,” Sicilia said.

Also, as Given explained, the greenbelt lands throughout the block make it much more difficult to create an efficient road network.

“It’s very difficult, when you have as much greenbelt as we have, to create a porous [road] system, and we are trying to do as much as we can, given the kind of geography we’re in ... When we have these greenbelt fingers coming down we can’t get the kind of easy connections that we would like to have.”

The most recent open house is one more step on the way to the adoption of a secondary plan for the area, which is expected to be before council in the fall of 2016. While the public response from the meeting has yet to be fully analyzed, Sicilia thinks the initial feedback is encouraging.

“The community seems to support the city taking a different approach to development in Block 41. [People] seem to have embraced the idea of complete community design, they’re interested in walkability and sustainability, they want to hear about these ideas, about how we are going to put them into our policies and make them work,” she said.

Staff are bringing the land use concept plans to committee of the whole November 10.