The gift that keeps on giving...

Tonight, as you know, is our regularly scheduled city council meeting. (be sure to watch Joe McParland's Council Warm Up at 5:45, as Mark and I are being interviewed on it) There's some interesting items coming before council that I want to highlight here.

Drive-thrus

Do we have to repeatedly make our case every time there's a deferral? Again we revisit the new downtown Burger King and their desire to install a drive thru for their restaurant. Our illustrious Planning Advisory Committee (PAC), intensely aware of how a progressive city develops (sarcasm) recommended a zoning change to allow the drive-through back in January of '07. Through public backlash and insight, our council denied the applicants zoning change application, only to have it appealed to the OMB (don't you wish we actually had control of how we develop our community?). In August of the same year, PAC recommended the approval of the applicants new zoning application and this time council buckled and approved it. So now, this little plot of land will be accessed by three curb cuts/access points- - but at least they're giving us some bike racks and a promise to protect a couple of trees!

To show just how maleable our Official Plan actually is, I wanted to include this quote from the administration report...

"After due consideration of the City of Windsor's Official Plan design guidelines for mixed use development within the City Centre Planning District, The Site Plan Review Committee has proposed the following direction:. (i) to recess the building wall away from the Goyeau Street lot line so as to accomodate the proposed after-hour walk-up windows, and at the same time, ensure safe pedestrian movement on the sidewalk in front of the subject land, (ii) to eliminate the request for 4.95m land conveyance along University Avenue frontage since engineering and Cororate Projects, Public Works Department has given its waiver of the requirement, and (iv) to deny present or future vehicular access along University Avenue frontage, by imposing a requirement for conveyance of a 1-foot reserve along the entire length of the University Avenue frontage"

FYI - I didn't mis-number those notations, that was the way administration presented the report.

For those of you familiar with the term "Mixed Use", does Site Plan Review's recommendations have anything to do with the definition you hold in your mind?

This should help attract world-class talent to the newly revitalized Armouries concert hall next door, shouldn't it? Vicky Kyriaco-Wilson, representing the Armouries Concert Hall Committee, is scheduled to speak on the issue. In addition to Ms. Kyraico-Wilson on the delegate list are a couple of "mystery" speakers; Scott Arbuckle, representing Planning & Engineering Initiative Ltd (Kitchener, ON) is listed and judging by this company's website, it seems as though they may be speaking proactively regarding the impact of developments like this; and then there's the like of Stewart Elkins, representing iTrans Consulting (Richmond Hill, ON), who (once again just by going by their company's website) appears to be speaking in favour of the development. Folks, you need to jump on the phones again because the hired guns are on top of this one!

We've got to nip this trend in the bud...

...because the drive-through-happy PAC is recommending yet another drive-through, though this one's located in the sub-urbs so I don't believe it will meet much opposition. The funny thing about this recommendation is that the drive-through is for a financial institituon. Is there nothing that people won't get out of their cars to do? Not even the Tim Horton's across the street from this proposed location has a drive-through, and we all know how much Timmy-fans like staying in their cars while buying coffee.

Official Plan Review

PAC has received administrations Official Plan Review report #17 and is forwarding it along to council tonight, so the process is rumbling along as predicted. Reading through the document one thing struck me as being contradictory. In it, Chris Aspila, the Official Plan Review (OPR) Project Manager states that "Windsor's economy is restructuring away from heavy manufacturing..." and from everything that we are experiencing with our declining automotive industry as well as the supporting Tool and Die businesses closing up shop, we would be fools to disagree with him.

Supporting documents (foundation studies) provided by the Planning department include i) 25 year Population and Housing Projections, and ii) 20 year Employment Projections and Employment Land Needs Analyses, which were initiated due to provincial requirements during every Official Plan 5 year review. Now, I have yet to read through these documents, (they are sitting on my bedside table as we speak) however, there seems to be a focus on our supposed lack of shovel-ready industrial land.

"In order to enhance Windsor's competitiveness in attracting future investment, it will be important to ensure that a good supply of serviced vacant employment land is available through the current 20 year planning period. Given the relatively limited amount of uncommitted high-quality serviced employment lands available in Windsor at present, it will be particularly important for the City of Windsor to move forward with the development of Secondary Plans and servicing of employment lands in the Sandwich South Planning District."(which is essentially the Annexed Lands near the airport)

Considering the rate at which we have businesses occupying serviced industrial properties closing up within the city already, and our "supposed" focus of moving away from heavy industrial towards a more knowledge-based local economy, these plans don't make a heck of a lot of sense. They also want to provide land for "office park development" when our downtown office vacancy is sky-high. So, why would we "invest" in supplying this expensive infrastructure to what is predominantly agricultural land if "Windsor's economy is restructuring away from heavy manufacturing..."?

It's not too late for everyone to get their comments into the planning department for compilation of the Official Plan Review. So, if this focus doesn't sit well with you either, please let them know by dialling 311 or visiting the official OPR website.