Rental towers appealed: Aquitaine transition

NRU
April 29, 2015
Edward LaRusic

The Ontario Municipal Board will decide whether three proposed rental towers near Lake Aquitaine in Mississauga are a creative use of the site or an inappropriate location for density and height, as staff and the local councillor claim.

“The application is not in conformity with any of the zoning or policies for the community and neither I nor the community supports it,” said Ward 9 councillor Pat Saito in an email to NRU. “The city passed our intensification policies some years ago that set out locations where we would support increased densities. This location is not within that zone.”

City staff says the proposed height and density are excessive for a site that is outside of a node, and the proposal is not compatible with the existing character of the area.

“Given that it’s such a prominent site in the community, fronting on Lake Aquitaine, we’d really like [the development to] maintain that character,” said development and design director Lesley Pavan.

7838794 Canada Inc. (Carttera Private Equities Inc.) proposes to build three rental apartment buildings of 17, 18 and 19 storeys with 492 dwelling units, 1,035 parking spaces and a density of 222 units per ha. at 2700 Aquitaine Avenue. The site lies northwest of Lake Aquitaine Park on a small peninsula of land that is currently occupied by three, three-storey rental apartment buildings with 112 rental units. These would be replaced by the proposed towers.

Carttera solicitor Mary Flynn-Guglietti (McMillan LLP) said that the rental buildings on the site are 40-years old and in need of replacement.

“It’s rare to build this kind of very exciting project that’s going to revitalize the site and create more purpose-built rental housing… I unfortunately think that the city is not giving [Carttera’s application a] proper review. They’ve said they don’t want any development here, full stop.”

Pavan said this is not a site on which the city is looking for intensification. As a neighbourhood under the official plan, buildings taller than four storeys must provide an appropriate transition to their context. While the neighbourhood does have some tall buildings in the range of 12 to 14 storeys, she said those buildings were developed in an earlier era as “towers in the park.”

“[The sites with tall buildings have] a lot of vegetation, a lot of green, mature trees. On this site, we’re losing a lot of that vegetation and bringing the buildings very close to Lake Aquitaine, which is very desirable and a well-used community amenity. [Carttera is] pushing those heights up, certainly intensifying the site much more than was ever intended for this site or the neighbourhood,” said Pavan.

Pavan added that she doesn’t think this proposal provides a proper transition to its context. The 17- and 18-storey buildings are across an internal road from three-storey townhouses, and the 17- and 19-storey buildings are adjacent to a public trail that runs around Lake Aquitaine.

“Whenever we see new development, I like to see new development knit into the community, so it fits into the character of the community,” Pavan said. The city has identified places where it encourages this kind of intensification, such as the downtown and the Meadowvale node to the west of Carttera’s site, but not here, she added.

Pavan noted that while the city supports rental housing, there is a good supply of rental housing in the area, and that she doesn’t think rental should be created “at the cost of appropriate and good planning.”

Carttera retained architect and planner Robert Glover (Bousfields Inc.) to specifically address the city’s concerns about transition.

The original application was for buildings of 19, 22 and 25 storeys. These have been reduced to 17, 18 and 19 storeys, the number of dwelling units from 614 to 492, and the density from 259 to 222 units per ha.

Flynn-Guglietti said these changes represent significant revisions to the proposal.

“We took [Glover’s] lead,” said Flynn-Guglietti. “The heights were reduced, the locations of the buildings were moved around to specifically address those issues of transition… all the shadow studies show that there is no impact on the lowdensity neighbouring residential, there’s virtually no impact on them at all.”

The amended application will be considered by council at its May 13 meeting. The Ontario Municipal Board hearing of Carttera’s appeal is scheduled to start November 3.