Planning committee approves site plan for three-storey, 26-unit apartment building on Manominee Street

At its February 16 meeting, Huntsville’s planning committee gave site plan approval for a proposed three-storey building, which would contain 26 apartments.

The building would be located on a parcel with 4,583.6m² in area at 50 Manominee Street. The parcel of land has 64m of frontage on an unopened road allowance and future collector road (Cliff Avenue) and 66m on Manominee Street, Town planner Kelsea Shadlock told committee.

“The property slopes up from Manominee Street, and is currently vacant and forested. The surrounding land uses are the following: commercial uses to the east and south, low-density residential to the north, and high-density residential on the abutting property to the west,” she added.

Planning staff were recommending that the site plan be approved, pending conditions such as a D4 landfill assessment and that any recommended mitigation be implemented.

A Traffic Impact Brief was provided to assess road capacity as a result of the proposed development and concluded the existing road infrastructure is able to accommodate the development.

According to Shadlock’s staff report, “The author of the report explained there was opportunity to provide a pedestrian connection from Manominee Street to Cliff Avenue (and to formalize what appears to be an informal pedestrian connection via the existing drainage swale). In their review, they determined additional assessment would be required to formalize this connection given the elevation differential between Manominee Street to Cliff Avenue and to ensure a connection would meet AODA requirements.” She added that, “Investigation of this connection should be further reviewed by the applicant in consultation with the Town’s Operations and Protective Services staff.”

Councillor Jonathan Wiebe questioned who would be responsible for paying for the linkage.

Matthew May, who was before committee representing the application, said he thought that would be the municipality’s obligation rather than the developer’s.  

“Often it is the case when we have developments, applications that come forward to us, that we do actually ask in the case of the applicant to provide, where they can, linkages—whether it’s trails, or stairs or whatever, or sidewalks or whatever, so that that would be part of the development. And that’s something that we traditionally do,” said committee chair Councillor Nancy Alcock.

May responded that the issue could be discussed, “but I guess for me it’s not on private property. You know, it’s not on our property…”

Wiebe and Alcock continued discussions surrounding adding a pedestrian linkage and making the developer responsible, or partly responsible.  

Huntsville Mayor Karin Terzino told committee that while pedestrian connectivity is important, she reminded the committee that the area discussed was not identified in the Town’s Sidewalk Master Plan. “To put the onus onto an applicant that wants to build there, as a condition of the build, I think it is a little bit unfair,” she said.

Prompted by a question by Councillor Dan Armour, May indicated that the apartments would be rented at market rates. He said they would be mostly one-bedroom units, with about four, two-bedroom apartments.

You can find staff’s report here.

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