Ajax begins ZBL review: engaging on intensification

NRU
July 8, 2015
By Edward LaRusic

With approval of its official plan conformity amendments, the Town of Ajax has launched its comprehensive zoning bylaw review to implement its plans for greater intensification. Public engagement is core to the review both to aid in gaining broad-based input and to counter potential NIMBYism.

Under the Growth Plan for the Greater Golden Horseshoe municipalities are required to bring their zoning by-laws into conformity with any new or comprehensive amendments to their official plans. With its official plan conformity amendments approved by the Ontario Municipal Board in November 2014, the town has launched a comprehensive zoning by-law review, with new tools to help engage residents.

Ajax mayor Steve Parish told NRU that it is particularly important to get people involved with the zoning by-law review given the town’s plans to intensify. If Ajax doesn’t get public support from residents, he said it could receive backlash due to the “not in my backyard syndrome.” But getting the public’s support requires good consultation, and he thinks the proposed tools can help.

“I think is only going to broaden our base and broaden our input, and that almost always leads to a better final product,”

Parish said. “When you’re doing these kinds of reviews of zoning by-laws, unless a person is directly affected they see this as remote and technical and ‘what does it have to do to me?’ Getting them out to traditional public meetings is very, very difficult.”

“In the past, we’ve done the traditional public open housings and public meetings that are required under the Planning Act, plus a little more,” said senior policy planner Stev Andis. “This time around, we’re obviously still doing that, but we’re trying to use digital and social media a little more actively, to engage the not-the-usual-suspects.”

One of these new tools is an interactive mapping tool developed by MMM Group, which has been retained to assist town staff with the comprehensive zoning by-law review. MMM senior planner Randall Roth told NRU that the mapping tool is new and innovative, having been used only once before in the creation of the City of Brockville’s 2014 zoning by-law.

“An individual can click on a property and see [his or her] zoning. And there’s links to the zoning provisions... They can also provide comments directly through that tool, either site specifically or more generally on the entire zoning by-law.

The intent is that this map will evolve with the first iteration of [Ajax’s draft zoning by-law]. It will have both the existing and the proposed zoning categories, so someone can easily compare and review changes that are being proposed through the review.”

MMM Group has also created an educational video that people can watch online to find out about the review. A second video is planned following the release of draft zoning by-law amendments.

The town also relaunched its Twitter account this month, which had been dormant since 2013. Part of a larger social media strategy, the account will be used to update followers on the progress of the review.

Andis said that the town’s 2003 zoning by-law needs updating to reflect new intensification areas and urban design policies in its amended official plan. For example, there are no provisions to guide mid-rise development in the downtown, or implement new policies regarding tall buildings such as base building heights, tower separation distances, and floor plate sizes.

“[The town has] new land use designations in the official plan for intensification areas. The current zoning in those new land use designations doesn’t implement the policies. So we’ll be looking at some new zones.”

The biggest discrepancies between the official plan and zoning by-law are in two of its intensification areas. One around the Ajax GO Station and the other in its midtown corridor along Harwood Avenue between Kingston Road and Highway 401. The lands around the GO Station are designated for commercial and employment uses, not the mixed-use residential development the town envisions. And the midtown corridor is for the most part zoned for low-rise commercial and residential uses, not the mixed-use, mid-rise development that the town wants.

Additionally, the town is considering a development permit system - an alternative to zoning that combines minor variances, zoning by-law amendments and site plan control into a permit-based system.

“Looking at the development permit system has been on council’s and the department’s agenda for some time now,” said Andis. “From a very high level view, using DPS in one of our intensification areas might be the best fi t because of all the built form and urban design policies in the OP for those areas.

We could implement considerably more of those policies through a DPS than we could reasonable implement through a zoning by-law.”

Gladki Planning Associates has been retained to help the town finalize a work plan and consultation strategy for considering a DPS. It will conduct background research and offer advice as to how a DPS might be implemented in Ajax.

The town has released eight discussion papers to begin stakeholder consultation in the fall: stable neighbourhoods, intensification areas, employment areas, transportation requirements, definitions and by-law format, Pickering Village, sustainability elements and the greenlands system.

Technical reports about potential zoning by-law amendments will be prepared in the spring of 2016 for consultation in the fall and draft amendments will be distributed for comment in the spring of 2017. Staff anticipate council will approve the amendments before the end of 2017.