Oshawa plans for urban growth area - Downtown intensification

NRU
Dec. 9, 2015
By Leah Wong

The City of Oshawa is seeking to attract more residential and economic growth into its downtown core and is adapting its planning and financial tools to make it happen.

This week the joint development services and finance committee supported a plan to amend the city’s existing downtown community improvement plans so that they better address provincial policies. It also recommended council update the programs used to attract redevelopment in the core.

“We have had some success in our downtown and we are [continuing] to experience successes with projects that are underway,” Councillor John Aker told NRU. “The City of Oshawa has a thriving downtown.”

Under the Growth Plan for the Greater Golden Horseshoe downtown Oshawa is designated as an urban growth centre. Council is considering amending its existing Central Business District and Downtown Shoulder Area community improvement plans to further encourage development to locate downtown and meet provincial growth targets-a combined 200 persons and jobs per hectare by 2031.

“We’d like to have a mix of commercial, residential and retail so there is feet on the street and a vibrant downtown core,” Councillor Doug Sanders told NRU.

Over the last decade there have significant anchor institutions added to the downtown that have started to encourage a ripple effect of revitalization. Two notable additions are the satellite campus for the University of Ontario Institute of Technology, which has brought a student population to the core, and the regional courthouse.

The improvements in the core have caught the attention of developers. For example, in the new year Atria Development’s 100 Bond Street apartment development will open adding 239 rental units downtown.

“We do have some residential in the downtown, but we want more so that the downtown becomes a live-work centre,” said Aker. He added that a residential population ensures that everyone does not leave the downtown at the end of the workday.

The proposed changes would expand the CBD CIP’s boundaries so that the downtown shoulder area is incorporated. If council approves the amendments the Downtown Shoulder Area CIP would be repealed. Under the new boundaries development charge exemptions, based on performance criteria, for apartments and townhouses would be extended to the shoulder area to further encourage residential development.

Under the CBD CIP the city offers a suite of loans to business owners to make façade and accessibility improvements, convert upper storeys to residential units and to meet Ontario Building Code standards. Moving forward staff recommends switching to a grant program. Planner Laura Moebs told committee that Oshawa is one of the few municipalities still using a loan program, while most others have moved to grant programs.

While the city’s increased assessment grant program would continue under the amended CIP, staff recommends it be administered on a case-by-case basis by council. Staff also proposes the creation of an economic stimulus grant program, which would assist non-residential property owners or tenants to make leasehold and accessibility improvements and to enhance ground floor and upper-storey commercial units.

Staff is recommending council adopt new evaluation criteria for the grants and that incentives be awarded on a more competitive basis. Moebs suggested the grants should be used to target specific types of employment-focusing innovation and technology, science, research and development, rather than professional and personal services. This will diversify the businesses in the downtown and is expected to create more jobs.

As younger generations have prioritized the use of active transportation over car ownership, Sanders said the city should be doing more to encourage them to move to-or stay in- Oshawa. With a downtown mobility hub anticipated on the former Knobb Hill Farms site, the city has an opportunity to further attract new people and businesses to the downtown.