Sudbury’s elected officials are slated to make it easier for the owners of institutionally zoned properties to redevelop them as residential units.
During the Jan. 20 planning committee meeting of city council, members threw unanimous support behind adding residential use to certain institutionally zoned properties as-of-right.
A common example of institutionally zoned properties being repurposed as residential units in Greater Sudbury has been shuttered schools.
As-of-right means these institutional properties can be made to accommodate residential uses without having to go back to city council for rezoning.
Another recent as-of-right decision allowance city council approved last month allows a fourth unit per residential lot, meaning four residential units are allowed per residential lot.
Although rezoning is no longer required to accommodate these changes in use “as-of-right,” all other existing rules, such as Ontario’s Building Code, still apply.
Institutional as-of-right zoning isn’t proposed to be allowed across the board, however. Affected properties must be:
- within the settlement area;
- serviced by municipal water and municipal wastewater with sufficient capacity to support the proposed uses; and
- within a community, as identified in the city’s Official Plan (Page 17).
A holding provision will be in place which prevents residential use until such time that city staff have determined these three conditions have been met.
This, city senior planner Bailey Chabot explained, “ensures that the intensification and redevelopment of these underutilized institutional parcels are focused on areas with appropriate infrastructure, appropriate supporting services and will help the city achieve intensification goals.”
City Planning Services director Kris Longston later clarified that these properties also have access to GOVA Transit and road infrastructure which was designed for greater populations.
Though he ultimately voted in favour of the city’s plan, Ward 11 Coun. Bill Leduc initially argued against limiting the as-of-right allowance to already-settled areas of the municipality.
“If we’re trying to hit our housing target, I think we need to open it up to everything and not just be specific to urban areas,” he said.
Longston clarified that the committee can still vote to approve site-specific exemptions on a case-by-case basis, which would allow for the residential development of institutional properties outside of these designated areas, as is already currently the case.
As the current planning committee’s first two years have shown, members have consistently voted to approve applications to develop outside of Greater Sudbury settlement areas. These decisions have been unanimous, in opposition to the advice of city staff, and ratified by city council as a whole.
Although shuttered schools immediately come to mind when it comes to institutional properties being repurposed as residential units, worship spaces, medical and research institutions could also apply alongside other comparable uses laid out in the city’s zoning bylaw.
During Monday’s meeting, the committee responded to one letter of concern by Coalition for a Livable Sudbury chair Naomi Grant.
Although supportive of using former institutional buildings for housing, Grant’s letter also expressed concerns regarding what becomes of school yards, which are used in many neighbourhoods as park space.
Ward 12 Coun. Joscelyne Landry-Altmann raised this point, prompting Chabot to clarify that school properties don’t count toward city parkland.
“When a school is surplussed, we are one of the first rights of refusal,” she added, noting that city council members are able to decide whether they want the city to purchase school properties whenever school boards are divesting of them.
Developers contributed five per cent of land toward parkspace, or cash in lieu, regardless of the size of property.
Efforts to free up institutionally zoned properties for residential use has been ongoing for years.
In 2022, then-Ward 4 Coun. Geoff McCausland tabled an Official Plan amendment which sought to make it easier for new builds and renovations to get approved within institutional properties. Around this time, the city commenced a housing as-of-right zoning review.
The zoning bylaw amendment proposed by city staff and approved by the planning committee on Monday is slated to permit R3-1 Medium Density Residential zone use within certain Institutional-zoned properties..
“The R3-1 zone standards will naturally limit the density of development and will limit the height of multiple dwellings to 19 metres,” Chabot’s report notes. There is no maximum number of dwelling units per building in an R3-1 zone, whose maximum lot coverage is 50 per cent.
The zoning bylaw amendment was ratified during Tuesday’s city council meeting. Its final adoption is slated to take place during the Feb. 4 city council meeting.
Tyler Clarke covers city hall and political affairs for Sudbury.com.