By: Isaac Callan, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, The Pointer
Brampton’s status as a bedroom community was last confirmed in 2016.
The Census released that year shows 36 percent of the city’s residents commuted to a job in their home town. Another 30 percent held jobs elsewhere in Peel and 33 percent left the region every day to work.
That is something leaders in Brampton say they want to change.
A foreign direct investment strategy and ideas to turn the downtown into a tech hub situated between Waterloo and Toronto are part of the broader goal, which has never been supported by sustained council work or funding commitments.
Guided by the Brampton 2040 Vision, adopted by the current and previous council as a master plan for future growth, City Hall is trying to reduce its reliance on the car and create well-paying jobs close to home.
The type of planning championed by the 2040 Vision depends on the expansion of employment opportunities within communities where residents live, otherwise all the pressures that come with commuting far distances—traffic congestion on major routes, an unmanageable amount of time spent travelling to and from work, lost productivity, inability to make transit and active transportation viable, lost revenues and economic development opportunities to markets where jobs are located, difficulty attracting investment for features such as dense housing and employment, both white and blue collar—are compounded.
The Province also has a policy on priority employment lands within urban boundaries, and has designated parts of Brampton under this mandated framework.
Property within one of these “Provincially Significant Employment Zones” cannot be converted from a commercial use to a residential use.
The problem for Rogers Communications is that its current property at 8200 Dixie Road is within one of these zones, but it wants to convert part of it to residential and part of it from high-density office space, which it currently operates, to much lower-density industrial employment space.
This goes against both the 2040 Vision and the Province’s policy, which is meant to protect employment lands to ensure there will be enough jobs for future populations moving into high growth areas.
The plan proposed by Rogers is to leave its current offices in Bramalea and move to downtown Brampton, while developing its existing property for residential and low-density industrial employment. It’s a step in the opposite direction of the one laid out in the 2040 Vision. The corporation is planning to build a $100 million, transit-oriented office at the Brampton downtown GO station and to vacate its old offices on Dixie.
The proposals for land Rogers wants to leave behind could move Brampton away from its push for jobs, putting key employment lands at risk. The company hopes to convert the Dixie land into a residential community that would back directly onto an industrial site.
The land is listed by the Province as key to job creation, a status that makes converting it to housing complicated.
Rogers originally approached the Region of Peel to have its Dixie Road property converted into a mix of housing and warehousing, not high-density employment met by operations like the current one Rogers maintains in the office space, where a range of customer and business support work is currently carried out inside the building.
The Region’s planning staff might push back against the company’s desire to transform office space to industrial use, while developing adjacent land for residential use.
A request to bypass the local planning process endorsed by the City of Brampton last week could complicate matters.
The property at 8200 Dixie Road is provincially significant employment land. The definition refers to designated areas “of high economic output” that are “strategically located to provide stable, reliable employment across the region”, according to provincial policy.
The company has proposed converting 25 of its 62 acres (40 percent) into housing. It suggests the remaining space can be converted into a warehouse of up to 1.2 million square feet that will specialize in logistics (with heavy commercial trucking use). The plan means the land would effectively change from a specific employment use that brought thousands of office jobs to the area, to a mixed-use.
Policies are embedded in Ontario’s planning rules to protect employment lands like the one Rogers owns.
The Places To Grow Act, 2005 legislation that guides the direction of growth in Ontario, explicitly protects the land from conversion to other uses. It says existing employment lands can be converted to non-employment uses (like housing) if they do not include “any part of an employment area identified as a provincially significant employment zone”.
To bypass this rule, Rogers would have to request changes through a municipal comprehensive review (MCR). That process, which involves updating a raft of key planning documents, is currently underway at the Region of Peel.
The telecom company asked to have its land converted through the MCR; it looks like it will not get the answer it wants.
“At this point, we haven’t supported [the Rogers request to rezone its Dixie Road lands] in our draft,” Adrian Smith, the Region of Peel’s chief planner, told The Pointer. He stressed that final recommendations will not be finalized until the spring and the project was “really interesting”.
Rogers has put a backup plan into action.
Last week it gained Brampton City Council’s support for a request to bypass the local planning process. On January 26, Brampton council members approved two requests for Minister’s Zoning Orders, or MZOs, to help Rogers relocate to the city’s downtown core. The second request could allow for the conversion of the Dixie Road lands.
An MZO acts as a veto over the local planning process, giving the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing unilateral power to change the types of homes or businesses allowed in an area. It allows developers to bypass the traditional public planning process, which involves multiple levels of City staff, a rigorous study and approval process and public consultation.
Rather than engaging in detailed negotiations with residents and staff, the business community, environmental groups and the City’s urban planners, builders are able to get shovels in the ground almost immediately with an MZO in hand. It dramatically reduces the involvement of all the other stakeholders.
Under Doug Ford’s leadership, the provincial government has overseen an explosion in MZOs. Brampton has eagerly taken part, requesting nine since September alone.
Rogers would not answer questions about the proposal to convert its current land or if it had explored other avenues to an MZO request. “Thanks for following up but we don’t have anything additional to add,” a spokesperson said.
The Dixie Road office plan included in Brampton’s MZO request would dilute the number of jobs hosted on a piece of land identified as provincially significant to employment creation. It would bring housing to some of the land and then reduce the density of “industrial” jobs in a parcel that would offer minimal employment.
The Thunder Bay Employment Land Strategy, completed by the same consultant advising the Region of Peel on its future employment decisions, says that industrial uses like trucking provide 26 jobs per hectare. Office space can offer as many as 185 per hectare. A move from office to logistics may result in 86 percent fewer jobs across the Rogers’ land where employment would still be accommodated, while the rest of it would be used for housing.
This is something, according to the Region of Peel, that needs careful consideration. “In contemplating any conversion of employment areas to a more mixed use function… it is necessary to evaluate whether the conversion may impact the viability and ongoing use of the employment lands, whether jobs are lost/displaced, and the rate/extent of change that may occur,” its draft policy on employment lands states.
A decision by Peel councillors to oppose the proposed GTA West Corridor makes employment land in the region even more precious.
The controversial 400 series highway, which could stretch from Milton to Vaughan if built, would open up areas in north Brampton and southern Caledon to be developed into business parks and warehouses. A tug-of-war between Ottawa and Queen’s Park, as well as the upcoming provincial election, could still see the project scrapped.
Peel is preparing a growth plan that assumes the highway will not be constructed, in support of its official policy which opposes the GTA West Highway. Existing employment lands, under the draft plan, which is trying to minimize urban boundary expansion, are more valuable than ever, especially considering the huge population growth as Peel is set to reach 2 million residents in less than three decades.
“Protecting these well-located employment lands from conversion — whether they form part of established employment areas, or those planned for future growth — takes on heightened importance in the absence of new major highway infrastructure, such as the GTA West Corridor,” the draft employment strategy states.
The City of Brampton and Region of Peel official plans both go to great pains to protect employment land. The Region’s plan explicitly orders lower tier municipalities, including Brampton, to maintain the employment areas they have.
The Brampton Official Plan looks to protect “the supply of designated employment areas within the City” as well as aiming to “increase the proportion of the City’s non-residential assessment base (tax revenue) by facilitating and promoting increases in the current level of business and industrial activity”.
Commercial (employment) lands bring in considerably more property tax revenue per hectare compared to residential, about double, and high density office properties yield far more money for the municipality compared to industrial space. But Brampton has struggled to reach an economically sustainable balance, with about three quarters of its property tax base being residential, compared to municipalities that are the other way around, bringing in much more revenue per hectare to pay for all the various costs cities have to cover.
The 2016 Census reported that, despite having similar populations, Brampton only hosted 155,116 jobs, compared to Mississauga which had 435,123, which has allowed it to shed its bedroom community label, while attracting key employment investment and high income earners who want to settle where good jobs are available.
It has also created a much more even revenue balance that has helped its financial picture immensely, unlike Brampton which continues to struggle under its low-density, low-employment model of sprawl.
Smith says the case is not yet compelling enough to convert the precious employment land Rogers currently owns. Brampton’s request for an MZO means he could yet be overruled.
“We receive many, many conversion requests [and] if you were to agree to them all, there would be a problem,” he said. “Unlike some of the other conversions we’ve been supporting, Dixie Road has not been identified in Brampton’s plans as being a real focus for residential growth, it’s not on a primary transit corridor, for example. That’s part of the context that’s at play.”
The MZO proposal put forward by Rogers—and rubber stamped by Brampton City Council—could drain an employment area of jobs. A bustling office space, filled with telecom professionals, would be replaced by housing that backs onto another industrial trucking operation in the city.
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