Centre Wellington to hire consultant to assist with growth plans

By Keegan Kozolanka, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, GuelphToday.com

ELORA — Centre Wellington council has authorized staff to have Watson and Associates Economists to conduct a land needs assessment to help determine how the township will grow in the future.

The land needs assessment will determine the following.

– the amount of land required to accommodate the provincially-projected growth to the 2051 planning horizon;

– the need for any employment area land conversions to non-industrial uses;

– the need for any urban settlement area boundary expansions; and

– the quantity of excess lands

Local resident Ian Rankine voiced his support for the assessment.

“The Watson report is an opportunity to change our land use planning processes for the better and in the long term public interest,” Rankine said.

Rankine also called for a mature decision making process to planning of local development and growth.

“Let’s choose dialogue and conversation. And identify what we agree on and how to close the gaps where we differ,” Rankine said.

However, Rankine cautioned that intensification could come with a negative impact on heritage areas.

“Residential intensification higher than three stories in our designated heritage areas and culture heritage landscapes will destroy it,” Rankine said.

Brett Salmon, managing director of planning and development, explained the need for intensification to lessen expansion.

“If council wanted to perhaps mitigate the amount of land that would need for urban expansion than our options are to either intensify more or have higher density on greenfields or some combination of both,” Salmon said.

Salmon suggested that council have Watson and Associates investigate alternatives to expansion.

“So in speaking with the county staff and where they’re at, the CAO and I are thinking that we would like to put forward that the township retain Watson to do a further analysis to come up with those kind of scenarios that might mitigate the amount of land that we need to expand the urban boundary by,” Salmon said.

Coun. Bronwynne Wilton asked that Watson and Associates investigate the possibility of even more density and intensification in Centre Wellington.

“With the study with Watson, is it possible to put in a stipulation that we want to run at least one scenario at the 30 per cent intensification and a 55 density jobs and people per acre density target?” Wilton said.

Jesse Gault is the Local Journalism Initiative reporter for GuelphToday. LJI is a federally-funded program.