A power outage postponed tonight’s public meeting on Barrie’s proposed new comprehensive, city-wide zoning bylaw.
Mayor Alex Nuttall made the announcement just before 6 p.m. in the darkened, crowded Rotunda at Barrie City Hall.
“We’ve committed to being online (having meetings) and we can’t do that,” he said, noting the power would be off until between 8 p.m. and 10 p.m.
The meeting will be postponed for at least 20 days.
The change that comes with Barrie’s proposed new comprehensive, city-wide zoning bylaw will not come easy.
Ray Duhamel, of Jones Consulting Group, said it’s an extremely important process and bylaw.
“The rubber hits the road at zoning, that’s where the control of the use of the land at an individual basis matters,” Duhamel told BarrieToday just before the meeting was postponed. “The zoning bylaw governs all uses of land.
“This will govern the use of every lot in Barrie, everything from how to build a shed, to accessory structures, how you expand on the house on your lot, how you get any sort of building permit of any kind and that’s everything from the smallest lot up to the biggest development,” he added. “So the implications to the city of working through the new zoning bylaw … there’s a very significant responsibility, to understand what it means to everybody.”
A zoning bylaw is a tool used to implement the policies of the newly approved City of Barrie Official Plan 2051. This key document controls the use of land, buildings and structures, across all property within Barrie. The zoning bylaw shows where buildings may locate on a property, how they can be used and what form they can take — detached houses and mid-rises, for example.
Barrie’s proposed new zoning bylaw expands building types in all neighbourhood areas, providing more housing options — singles, semis, row houses, walk-up apartments and multiplexes, for example — to aid in improving housing affordability, according to the city.
The new bylaw also permits additional height and density in all neighbourhood areas.
Building types permitted in neighbourhood areas have been linked to road classification, to tie denser developments to the streets that are equipped to encourage walking, cycling and transit use.
Land uses have been expanded to permit a wider variety of uses to support walkability, reduce automobile dependency and create opportunities for connectivity to the local community.
Overall lot standards and setbacks are smaller, allowing for more compact built forms. Zoning standards which were historically only seen in the previous Hewitt’s and Salem secondary plans have been applied, where appropriate, city-wide.
Despite the postponement of Tuesday night’s public meeting, the city has heard through correspondence from some heavy hitters about its proposed new comprehensive, city-wide zoning bylaw.
Gerry Pilon of Salter Pilon Architecture, Michael McKnight of McKnight Charron Architects, Tero Malcolm of ISM Architects and Ted Handy of Ted Handy and Associates signed and sent a letter to the city.
“We … are concerned that the urban design requirements will increase the cost of construction and make an already complex approval process more inflexible and time consuming,” they wrote. “(The proposed bylaw) introduces elements of building design into zoning. Zoning bylaws in Ontario are the least flexible form of planning control. There is no compromise in zoning as a matter of law.”
Collectively, these architects say they have staff of more than 70 people and have been responsible for a significant amount of development in Barrie during the last 40-plus years, designing more than 6,800 units of housing and 3.3 million square feet of commercial space and 6.8 million square feet of institutional space.
“While we call Barrie home, we work throughout the province and beyond and understand design and planning very well,” their letter reads.
The city also heard from Don Pratt of Pratt Development/Christdawn Construction and Brad Pratt of Bradley Homes/Pratt Construction about their Hewitt’s Gate development in Barrie. They wrote of a wide range of problems with the proposed new city-wide zoning bylaw.
“Specific items that are either contradictory with another bylaw, impact current and future site plans and impede or significantly alter our model designs,” they wrote. “The changes outlined by this bylaw will be costly in both time and money spent altering our plans to absorb these new laws.”
Veteran planning consultant Bob Lehman has spoken out about the proposed new city-wide zoning bylaw.
“This is a new bylaw, which means everybody’s property will be subject to new and different zoning requirements,” he told BarrieToday. “One of the most significant changes is the permission for four-storey apartment buildings anywhere in the east end (of Barrie). A four-storey apartment can be built with no notice to neighbours, no public meeting, no appeal, no ability to comment to council. I think this is wrong.
“I would support the development of any form of housing if the location was appropriate,” Lehman added. “However, I don’t believe that every residential area of the city is the right place for the construction of a four-storey apartment building.”
Lehman said he also has concerns with design standards in the proposed bylaw.
This includes regulating the location, height, spacing or number of entrances and the direction that a pedestrian entrance faces, regulating the length of a building, how much of a building frontage is required to be certain type of use, exterior finishes, the location and nature of windows, the minimum or maximum height of a podium, the minimum proportion of ground-floor frontage in a certain use or type of use and regulating the interior design of entrances.
“There are several design standards that from my understanding are not authorized by the planning legislation,” he said. “I think that these standards are supported by little if any planning rationale and intrude into what should be the architectural design process.
"Most of the standards do not deal with impacts on adjacent uses but rather express a design perspective that, in my opinion, if applied throughout the city will suppress innovation and encourage sameness of design," Lehman added.
Kelly Patterson McGrath and Ashley Hammell, of Pollinate Barrie, asked how the new zoning bylaw would address landscape and open spaces in terms of city-wide community and design guidelines.
“We would respectfully request that the City of Barrie makes it a requirement, not a suggestion, that all new developments, residential or other, be required to plant native trees and plants to build a local ecosystem that supports native ecosystem restoration,” they wrote.
“As we understand it all new subdivision builds are required to plant and support boulevard trees; we need to tell them what species of native trees to plant to ensure that a healthy ecosystem is maintained as our city grows," they added.
The proposed — but on hold — controversial synthetic turf, multi-purpose youth sports field and parade grounds on city land east of Military Heritage Park, close to Lakeshore Drive, has even entered the conversation about new city-wide zoning bylaw.
“The area should never be developed,” Barrie resident Arnie Ivsins saod in letter to the city, “and only be used for environmental conservation, have ecological management measures installed, include naturalized buffers, be used for educational and passive purposes only including signage, nature trails, benches and lookout points.”
In Barrie since 1981, Ivsins said he has witnessed land designated environmental protection or greenspace be rezoned for development. He asks city council to designate this land, known as Allandale Station Park, as a nature conservancy, or as an area of natural and scientific interest, to protect it.
Thomas Gerry also favours protecting Allandale Station Park.
“I am in favour of keeping the forest as a passive eco-park to be used for educational purposes,” he wrote to the city. “The forest is presently zoned as open space and I would like to see that changed to environmental protection with provisions, so that the land can be protected from development.”
Pollinate Barrie's Patterson McGrath and Hammell also weighed in.
“It’s critical that we protect this area with strong management policies and practices that contribute to biodiversity conservation in our city as we grow,” they wrote. “We did not find any clear definition or alignment of the city’s EP (environmental protection) zoning or natural heritage designation that would specifically address our request.”
Following this public meeting, staff were to prepare a report and final version of the zoning bylaw, based on feedback and technical comments.
The report was to go to city council in early 2025 for its consideration.
That schedule has undoubtedly been delayed because of the public meeting’s postponement.
