Online Town Hall » Planning

Envision Guelph – an Official Plan update

Mike Salisbury — Thu, 13 May 2010 01:28:05 +0000

The City of Guelph has completed Envision Guelph – the City’s Official Plan update. The document will guide residential, employment, and commercial development, natural and cultural heritage conservation and the city’s transportation and energy systems over the next 20 years.

The 300-page document is available for public review. City Council is asking for comments and will hear presentations from the public during a meeting on May 20 at 7 p.m. in Council Chambers.

During the meeting City staff will recommend that City Council adopt the Natural Heritage policies and mapping this summer; this portion of the Official Plan Amendment (OPA 42) has been the subject of extensive public input, and has been available for review since February of this year. Once the Natural Heritage Strategy is adopted, the public and City Council will have more time to review and comment on the remainder of the Plan.

“I’d like to thank everyone who participated in Envision Guelph open house events and other public meetings over the past few years to help formulate this Official Plan,” says Marion Plaunt, Manager of Policy Planning and Urban Design for the City of Guelph. “Community members shared their vision for the city’s growth with us, and it was this shared vision that helped us update the Official Plan. It will be invaluable tool for us as we continue to build a beautiful, well-functioning and sustainable city.”

According to the Envision Guelph – Official Plan Update, new growth will be accommodated within Guelph’s existing boundaries in order to prevent sprawl into surrounding agricultural land. The City has identified areas where intensification will be focused including downtown, major nodes and corridors that are served by transit routes. The Plan also promotes walking, cycling and public transit throughout the city.

“The Official Plan strikes a balance between protecting and preserving our natural features and cultural heritage, ensuring energy sustainability and building healthy communities where people can live, shop, work and play,” adds Plaunt.

In June, 2009 City Council adopted Phase One (Official Plan Amendment 39) which brought the City’s Official Plan into conformity with the Province’s Growth Plan for the Greater Golden Horseshoe. Now, Phase Two (Official Plan Amendment 42), proposes to incorporate the City’s Strategic Plan and provides for the implementation of Guelph’s Growth Management Strategy, Natural Heritage Strategy, Urban Design Action Plan, Community Energy Initiatives and other City approved Master Plans and studies.

Community members are welcome to review the draft Official Plan update and make written or oral presentations to City Council on May 20, 2010 at 7 p.m. in Council Chambers at City Hall, 1 Carden Street. The deadline to register as a delegation with the City Clerk’s office is May 12, 2010. Written submissions will be accepted until 12 p.m. on May 20, 2010.

We should keep our options open on the new library

Mike Salisbury — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 14:20:34 +0000

(Originally Printed in the Guelph Mercury, “Sightlines” – by Unto Kihlanki )

This past Monday, largely due to the efforts of Coun. Mike Salisbury, Guelph city council decided not to turn the city’s recently acquired building at 152-158 Wyndham St. into a parking lot, at least not yet. They voted to investigate the option of renovating it for other possible interim uses while we wait for the day, perhaps quite distant, when it is slated to become part of the proposed new central library.

Good for our council. The merchants currently located along Wyndham must be breathing a long collective sigh of relief. A gaping hole in the fabric of the existing frontage is the last thing they need now, as they struggle to maintain a semblance of commercial vitality on their street.

Finding an active use for the building has to be preferable to demolition; returning it to a retail use would be best because it would support the retail nature of the street, which, I’m assuming, is still an important objective.

But why the rush to demolish in the first place? Apparently, city staff had not even considered other options. They wanted to spend $400,000 now, rather than a few thousand on renovations to try to find new tenants. That could only make financial sense if the need to clear the site were a short-term certainty. It isn’t; the start of actual construction of the library is likely to take years before it happens, if it ever happens.

Furthermore, demolition would make it more difficult for our next council to modify the Baker Street redevelopment design concept, should it choose to do so. Our future councils need maximum freedom to respond to contemporary circumstances as they unfold, not to be impeded, unnecessarily, by the unfulfilled ambitions of previous councils.

Many people feel it is unfortunate that the library project has been postponed. I don’t know; maybe they are right. After all, design projects are never perfect, and at some point we need to just get on with the work of building. And I do agree that a new library is a worthwhile project for the city to undertake.

But, I also think that the current design scheme for the Baker Street redevelopment project is seriously flawed. Readers of this column may remember that when the various design options were under evaluation I weighed in against the present proposal, preferring the ones that would place the library on Baker Street instead, while keeping the tradition of commercial frontage along Wyndham intact.

I have never been convinced by the urban design rationale put forward by the city’s consultants to justify the extreme measure of expropriation. The idea that the new library will serve as a “second anchor” for the Wyndham Street retail corridor, along with the new city hall on the south, is seductive but fanciful.

The concept of reinforcing a retail corridor by placing anchor tenants at the ends is born of shopping mall design. It works because the major retailers that are typically used as “anchors” draw more shoppers to the smaller shops that lie between them than they could draw on their own.

But, imagining that you can simply substitute a library for a major national retailer to serve as a retail anchor is to misunderstand the concept completely. Perhaps we should test the idea by outbidding Sears for their spot at the Stone Road Mall, and offering to put the new library there; but I doubt that the mall would go for it, even if we offered twice what Sears is willing to pay. The owners are not that naive.

While it is true that the library would draw new traffic to the street and that many of the people would be the ones that the store owners are trying to attract, they are not likely to be in the same shopping mood as they are when they decide to pay a visit to a major retailer. And that is the critical difference.

To our city staff and politicians, it may seem like a daunting task to try to find a major national retailer to locate on Wyndham Street; it may be politically unappealing to many of them compared to the easy sell of a new library. But if we are serious about maintaining the commercial vitality of our main downtown shopping street, it deserves consideration.

Like it or not, since we now have additional time, and some additional property to work with, we might as well take full advantage to make sure we undertake the best possible project, when we eventually can build it. Getting this right is the key to the successful revitalization of the downtown commercial core, it is extremely important.

Guelph Mercury Editorial

Mike Salisbury — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 19:51:56 +0000

Bravo for creating arts, culture post

By Renann Isaacs, curator, Alma Gallery, Guelph

Dear Editor – Re: “Need for cultural post debated” (Guelph Mercury, Dec. 19).

Hooray for Mike Salisbury and the six other councillors who voted in support of creating a much needed position for an arts and culture supervisor. I can’t believe Guelph has been without one.

I recently moved from Montreal to be closer to my parents. I chose Guelph because of its potential and because I wasn’t prepared to move back to the architecturally and culturally demolished city of Toronto, where my parents live.

Downtown Guelph is a gem waiting to be discovered.

Despite the poor placement of buses, the abundance of pubs, and the chaotic signage, the core of the city consists of stunning neighbourhoods and heritage buildings that are ideal for accommodating a beautiful community of bed and breakfasts, cafés, fine dining restaurants, boutique shopping, galleries, and anything to do with the arts in general.

Visitors from all over have admired the area and some have even contemplated moving here.

Imagine then my shock when I heard that there were still folks around like Councillors Gloria Kovach, Christine Billings and Kathleen Farrelly who referred to a proposal supporting arts and culture as “nebulous.”

Wow! How terribly Sarah Palinesque!

If a city wants to position itself for a changing world it has to attract and excite people, not make their lives dull.

Sprawling suburbs and strip malls with redundant conformity do not stimulate economies. Culture does.

Bravo to those Guelphites who have the courage to look to the future. By providing the city with an arts and culture supervisor we can facilitate the change needed to make this city an even greater going concern. Yes we can!

Small Victories

Mike Salisbury — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 18:03:35 +0000

One of the benefits of living in the ward I represent is noticing the small things that need attention. One of those “small things” can now be crossed off my list.

At the beginning of my term I toured our neighbourhood with the Director of Community Design and Development. I pointed out that while Paisley Rd. was one of the primary connections to the rest of the city, the sidewalk on the north side of the road was missing.

In fact, the sole bus stop on Paisley road required residents to walk along a dusty goat trail to access the rest of the community; not particularly accessible to say the least.

The original plan was to look at installing the sidewalk as part of a larger motion I made to move forward with a pedestrian rail underpass to Margaret Greene Park as identified in the trail master plan following the fatal accident we had last year.

I expect this issue to be debated by council next year, however by the end of this summer a number of sidewalk projects planned by the city could not be completed and my request was bumped up to the front of the line.

Together with staff we reviewed a number of other sidewalks that need to be completed in the west end including Imperial Rd. south of Speedvale and Elmira Rd. south of Willow. These projects are in the works for next year.

Two cents on $400 million

Mike Salisbury — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 03:22:29 +0000

I recently attended the Making Cities Liveable conference in Portland. When I arrived at the airport I had a choice between a $40 + cab fare to my downtown hotel or taking the light rail rapid transit which conveniently stopped right in the airport terminal. My direct commute to downtown Portland took only minutes, brought me to within one block of my hotel and cost me less than five bucks. For the rest of my stay I took transit anywhere I wanted to go in the downtown absolutely FREE, no charge, zero dollars…nothing.

City of Portland is one of the most progressive urban environments in North America. The entire city is serviced by a system of light rail and transit so effectively that there is a noticeable absence of cars in the downtown core. With a population of just over 500 thousand people in the City of Portland the question on everyone’s mind was, “How can they afford this”

As it turns out, the City received money that was originally allocated for major freeway development from the state of Oregon to be used for the development of a comprehensive urban and regional transit system following a public outcry over the wisdom of spending millions of dollars on newly proposed highways.

Which brings me back to the $400 million question facing the good people of Kitchener and Guelph.

As it turned out, Jane Mitchell a councillor with the Region of Waterloo, attended the same conference and we spent a good deal of time talking about some of the common issues facing our cities. We talked at great length about Waterloo’s rapid transit initiative.

According to the region’s website:

Building a better community requires a more balanced and integrated transportation system that will help us accommodate future growth and development in urban areas while protecting our rural areas. The Region of Waterloo’s proposed Rapid Transit Initiative will link the employment, residential and commercial areas of Cambridge, Kitchener and Waterloo, provide enhanced transit throughout the Region, and help us boost our Region’s economy, competitiveness and prosperity over the next 30 years.

Do you notice something missing? How does Guelph fit into this vision,…? Well currently it doesn’t ;we are building a new road instead.

The price of gas is skyrocketing, Al Gore tells us we are approaching a tipping point with our environment, population growth in our area is predicted to skyrocket, communities such as Portland are proving the business case for rapid transit while our neighbours are actively planning the infrastructure. Oh yeah, and the price tag for a shiny new freeway between Guelph and Kitchener has doubled in the last few years.

I’m not suggesting we don’t address the need for improved highway infrastructure between our cities, but do we really need to spend hundred of millions of dollars on a new freeway that in a few years will be just as congested as highway 7 is today?

Remember the 407 when it was first built, or the 401 when it was expanded to 4 lanes all the way to Milton? They are both parking lots during rush hour these days. Ask anyone from Los Angeles or Toronto and they will tell you bigger freeways are only a temporary solution to congestion.

Both Jane and myself are working with our peers in an effort to begin a dialogue on these issues. We simply CAN’T afford to let this opportunity slip away on us, $400 million could go a very long way towards “boosting our economy, competitiveness and prosperity over the next 30 years” to paraphrase the region.

We can learn from the mistakes and examples of other cities, or we can simply roll up the windows and wait for the car in front of us to creep ahead a few more inches.

Transit Improvements

Mike Salisbury — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 18:29:14 +0000

Transit Services recently announced the need to change from our existing 30 minute service during peak times to a 40 minute service. The change is more an admittance of the reality of our current situation rather than a policy change, nevertheless it appears that at the very point when the most people need public transit we are not able to accommodate them very effectively.

As it stands now, most bus routes in the City leave and return to the square downtown, this is referred to as a radial system. With the increase in ridership and size of our city perhaps we have reached the limits of our current radial configuration.

We have been told that 10% of the time spent during the day is in the square waiting for people to transfer between buses. This will be dramatically improved upon the development of a more efficient multi-modal transit node however, with a radial design ALL of our buses must wait for the slowest bus to arrive and transfer passengers before leaving the downtown. The whole system must accommodate the weakest link.

In addition this built in inefficiency; the radial system as we currently have fails to provide direct transportation to and from the commercial centres (as established during the Commercial Policy Review) to the surrounding community.

As an example, if you live in the west end south of the tracks and take the bus to go grocery shopping you cant take a bus back home unless you first go back downtown and transfer to another bus to take you back to the west end. It gets even worse if you live on the north side of the tracks because you can’t even get to the shopping area without going downtown and transferring first!

Existing Situation

The current system can be represented by a graphic that looks a lot like a flower. All routes begin and end at a central point. As you can see, one of the drawbacks to this design is the concentration of buses the closer we get to the center transfer point.

Possible Solution

The recent Commercial Policy Review established four nodes within the city as areas for higher intensity commercial and residential development. Imperial, Paisley, Elmira Rd intersection in the west end is an example of this policy in action. These nodes could be serviced with shorter, higher frequency bus routes to the surrounding neighbourhood with direct express service to the downtown core and a perimeter route connecting each node.

This type of transit configuration would increase local access to shopping areas while providing direct high frequency service to the city centre. The shorter higher frequency service combined with shorter higher frequent express service to the downtown would eliminate the need for buses to wait to transfer passengers. As an example, in Toronto people don’t necessarily know what time the bus arrives, they just know the next bus will arrive shortly.

Please provide YOUR comments and ideas.

Guelph Dolime public comment

Mike Salisbury — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 18:22:33 +0000

The public has until August 13 to comment on the application by River Valley Developments Inc. to change a licence condition that would allow it to extract twice as much limestone from the former Guelph Dolime site west of the Hanlon Expressway.

Most of Guelph’s water comes from a permeable zone within the Amabel Formation which is locally referred to as the “Production Zone”. In places, the bedrock is overlain by overburden deposits – clays, silts and sands that were placed by glaciers. Rain water must first infiltrate through these formations to reach to reach the bedrock. Some of these layers are aquitards and water moves very slowly through these layers. The aquitards act as barriers to protect the deeper groundwater resources.

The issue as I understand it, is that by extracting more aggregate without increasing the size of the quarry means that the quarry floor (already well below the water table) will need to be pushed significantly deeper, posing two potentially serious problems for the residents of Guelph

1. Deeper excavation will result in increased dewatering at the quarry which may draw down the water table around the quarry and possibly affect City wells
2. There is the potential that a deeper quarry floor will breach the protective Eramosa aquitard which may lead to contamination of our primary aquifer.

This proposal has been posted for a 31 day public review and comment period starting July 13, 2007. If you have any questions, or would like to submit your comments, please do so by August 13, 2007

Ministry of Natural Resources – Ref # FSD GUE 22/07

New Highways… but nowhere a bus to be seen.

Mike Salisbury — Sat, 24 Mar 2007 04:25:33 +0000

The Ministry of Transportation announced this week that it is moving forward with plans to build a new, four-lane highway between Kitchener and Guelph to reduce traffic congestion, improve safety and accommodate growth.

Ironically, while the Ontario government committed to supporting improved transit system to run through the urban cores of Cambridge, Kitchener and Waterloo… the more than 21,000 commuters who travel daily between Kitchener and Guelph will be encouraged to drive their cars.

The reduction of personal vehicle use for commuting is not only a local or regional issue…it is a global issue. Effective, efficient and affordable public transportation is one of the easiest and most effective tools we have to improve greenhouse gas emissions.

Improved transit services within the Tri-cities Area and Greater Toronto (including more frequent service, access to a range of destinations, and reduced travel times) would not only increase ridership and improve highway congestion, it is a key ingredient in an improved quality of life and hence an improvement in our competitive advantage and ability to attract investment and businesses.

Regional planning studies conducted over the last few years have clearly stated that continuing with road expansions alone is not a realistic or affordable option to manage growth. Instead, aggressive efforts need to be made to pursue land use and transportation policies that will promote public transit, reurbanization and greater transportation choice.

Rapid Transit is identified in the new Provincial Places to Grow Growth Plan, as one of the key catalysts to support downtown core revitalization and control urban sprawl in the Region.

The city of Guelph must continue to promote and lobby the provincial government for an effective inter-regional transit system linking the entire Tri-Cities Region to the Greater Toronto Area, the City of Brantford and the City of Hamilton.

On a lighter transit note – Brenan and Ryan’s geography project on Guelph’s transit system. “Diverse Conversational Material”

The Debate Over Body Rub Parlours

Mike Salisbury — Sun, 11 Feb 2007 22:16:32 +0000

In 2005 City Council amended the zoning bylaw to define body rub parlours as a specific land use, then proceeded not to include this new zone within the master plan for our city.

The council of that day naively thought that this would keep our city free from this type of business; however a recent newspaper article indicated that we now have eight body rub parlours in town… about the same number of Tim Horton’s outlets.

In the words of Frederica Montseny, “Prostitution presents a moral, economic and social problem that cannot be resolved juridically” and yet over the next few months that is exactly what City council will be facing – how to craft bylaws to deal with the proliferation of body rub parlours in Guelph.

The issues are very complex, very important and will have far reaching implications. I have included a number of web references readers may find interesting.

Legal Precedence and the Cost of Defending Municipal Bylaws in the Courts

Issues Related to Human Trafficking

The Coalition against Trafficking in Women

Human Rights and Health Issues for Sex Trade Workers

We must protect community standards, protect individuals from exploitation, and yet at the same time uphold individual rights.

Do body rub parlours violate community standards? Are women being exploited? Would banning body rub parlours improve our community or simply force sex trade workers underground and make things worse? What about safe sex and harm reduction? Are we trying to regulate a basic human need? These are difficult questions.

Please contribute to this discussion.

2007 Development Priorities Plan

Mike Salisbury — Fri, 09 Feb 2007 19:00:33 +0000

The Guelph Development Priorities Plan (DPP) provides a multi-year forecast of development activity and is used to manage growth in a balanced and sustainable manner.

At the inaugural meeting of the Community Development and Environmental Services Committee, I brought forward a resolution referring the DPP back to city staff. ‘to report back in March with possible strategies to curb sprawl’ within this year’s development priorities plan.

This resolution was made in response to several issues, recommendations and industry indicators presented in the DPP itself.

“The Growth Plan for the Greater Golden Horseshoe now requires that by the year 2015, 40% of new growth occurs within the built up areas of Cities. Since most of the new subdivision activity identified by the DPP is expected to be identified beyond the built boundary (i.e. Greenfield area) there is the need to take a more conservative approach to Greenfield approvals and commitments.” (pg 25 sect. 10.6 – Recommendations)

“The CMHC states that while housing starts for detached dwellings are declining from the record levels, the demand for less expensive forms of housing (i.e., semi-detached, townhouses and apartments) will strengthen.” (pg 15 sect. 6.0 – Summary of Development Activity)

A full copy of the Development Priorities Plan presented to council is available online – 2007 DPP (PDF)

Proposed Development in Ward 4

When we look at the maps for the proposals, they’re all very clearly hugging the outside boundary of our city limits, while large swaths of land speckled throughout our ward are fully serviced and ready for development at no additional cost to the City.

I believe that it is vital to the health of our communities to encourage infill development, in keeping with market demand, on these available pieces of land BEFORE we grow further and further outward. I look forward to working with City staff and the development community to realize this vision.