Whitchurch-Stouffville wants jobs: Caught in the middle

NRU
July 29, 2015
By Edward LaRusic

As York Region plans how it will grow to 2041, Town of Whitchurch-Stouff ville staff says it hasn’t allocated enough jobs to the town. It wants the province to allow settlement expansions onto countryside land so that it can create new employment lands.

“We’re caught in this loop, where the province says we don’t need the land because we don’t have the employment allocation to require it, and then the region tells us we can’t get the employment allocation to require it because we don’t have the land to accommodate it,” planning and development services director Steve Kemp told NRU. “It’s a circular problem that, so far, we haven’t found a way to get out of.”

The town wants employment growth east of Highway 404 along its border. But like most of the municipality, those lands are either in the Greenbelt Plan or Oak Ridges Moraine Conservation Plan, which prohibit such lands from being serviced. Without allowing additional settlement areas on the east side of Highway 404, the town doesn’t have the land to accommodate the employment growth it wants by 2041.

The province is in the midst of a co-ordinated review of several provincial plans, including the Greenbelt Plan and Oak Ridges Moraine Conservation Plan, which has allowed municipalities to ask the province to make changes to the plans, such as changes in settlement area boundaries. Meanwhile, the region is consulting with area municipalities on growth scenarios to 2041 as part of its regional comprehensive official plan review.

Whitchurch-Stouff ville has planned to accommodate 60,600 people and 23,000 jobs by 2031. Under the region’s draft scenarios, the town would need to accommodate between 4,600 and 7,300 more residents between 2031 and 2041. But due to a lack of employment lands in the town, the region is proposing to allocate zero to 400 new jobs within the same time period. That means a drop in the town’s activity rate-the ratio of jobs to people-from 0.38 to 0.35, which Kemp said is a problem.

“As we have residential growth, we don’t want to have all our residents having to travel to Markham, Newmarket or Aurora to get to work. The more jobs that we can have here, the more likely we are to be able to manage our transportation demand and traffic issues. We want people to be able to live here and work here.”

While the town does have some employment lands in Stouffville, planning manager Alan Drozd told NRU said they’re not suitable for many employment uses because they are over eight km. from a 400 series highway. The town would rather convert the Stouffville employment lands to accommodate new residential growth.

“The town did its own growth management study in 2014 ... that analysis concluded that an additional 56 net ha. of serviced employment lands were required in town. From a growth management perspective, the conclusion taken at that point was that land ought to be located somewhere along the 404 corridor, conducive to the locational needs of businesses.”

Draft York Region growth scenarios

York Region is in the midst of analyzing and refining three growth scenarios as part of its comprehensive review of its official plan. With amendment 2 to the Growth Plan for the Greater Golden Horseshoe released, the region is planning to accommodate 1,790,000 residents and 900,000 jobs by 2041. To do that, the region has created three growth scenarios. The first two require urban expansion into the whitebelt and the third requires no urban expansion:

Scenario 1-40 per cent of all residential growth would occur in the built-up area requiring about 2,300 ha. of whitebelt lands to accommodate the remaining targeted growth.

Scenario 2-50 per cent of all residential growth would occur in the built-up area, requiring 1,100 ha. Of whitebelt lands to accommodate the remaining targeted growth.

Scenario 3-64 per cent of all residential growth would occur within the built-up area and no whitebelt lands would be required.

The region expects to accommodate almost all of its employment growth on existing lands, requiring an additional 160 ha. of whitebelt lands in both the first and second scenarios.

Drozd acknowledged that allowing employment on those lands would require a change in provincial policy, as they are governed by either the Oak Ridges Moraine Conservation Plan or the Greenbelt Plan. But he said that these lands are largely not worth preserving as countryside lands.

“By and large, the vast majority of lands along the 404 corridor in Whitchurch-Stouffville are rural in character, and don’t have any significant environmental constraints with one or two little exceptions,” he said. “[Meanwhile,] there are four fully directional interchanges with [Highway 404], representing a very, very significant investment in provincial infrastructure dollars that can’t be utilized because of the various provincial plans that have been put in place.”

Ultimately, Drozd and Kemp would like the region to work with the province to open up the lands east of Highway 404 for employment uses to allow more employment growth to 2041.

York Region chief planner Valerie Shuttleworth told NRU that the region is not worried about Whitchurch-Stouff ville’s activity rate dropping. She said the region is working towards an activity rate of 0.5, and given the different geographies of each of the municipalities, it’s inevitable that some activity rates will rise while others fall.

“Given the geography and situation that Whitchurch-Stouff ville is in, 0.35 or 0.38, that’s actually pretty good. And they’re still going to achieve employment growth [to 2041].”

Shuttleworth added that the region is not interested in adding employment lands at this time. The region expects that employment growth to 2041 can be accommodated on existing lands with potentially some minor expansion-160 ha.-into the whitebelt. But the region would support opening up lands for employment uses along Highway 404 in the future.

“What we have done in our submission to the province on their comprehensive review of the provincial plans, we have said in the long-term, we will not be able to meet our employment growth needs. We would like a process or a criteria to access 400 series highway lands for employment purposes only,” she said. “We’re supporting Whitchurch-Stouff ville in [its] desires, but from the regional perspective, it’s a longer term need. We are on the same page, maybe just not on the same timing.”

York Region is currently reviewing three draft growth scenarios to 2041, and plans to present a preferred scenario and policy direction to regional council in November.