Group home rules among possible zoning changes
Regina city planners are dropping some early hints of what’s coming in a massive redo of zoning rules expected this time next year.
It will likely include “significant changes” to how group homes are regulated and moves to favour mixed-use development. It may well affect what you can do with your property.
“We are rezoning the entire city,” said Lauren Miller, Regina’s manager of city projects. “Everybody is going to get a new zone.”
Zoning dictates what land can be used for in the city, governing everything from how high developers can build to where residents can open a home business. It’s been 26 years since the bylaw got a comprehensive redrafting, with a hodgepodge of amendments making it difficult to navigate.
Miller spent Tuesday morning talking to business owners, real estate brokers and other interested parties. She told them how the city wants to build a more logical zoning bylaw. She said staff are following a “three click rule.”
“It would take you three clicks to get the information you need to build,” she said.
It’s impossible to know what the finished product will look like, since it will still have to go through a public consultation process and earn council support. But she revealed at least a few things the city is working on as it builds a draft.
She said her team is “looking at ways” to reduce parking requirements for some kinds of development. Planners are also exploring new ways to mix residential, commercial and industrial uses in the same building.
“We know that we need to look at expanding. We only have one mixed zone,” she said.
But Miller’s strongest statements came in response to ques- tions on care facilities. She said she wants the draft zoning bylaw to make it “less onerous” to open a group home in Regina.
“We already knew that the way we regulated group care facilities was way out to lunch,” she said. “We regulate group care facilities far more stringently than we regulate anything else. Cannabis, adult entertainment — all of those have far less restrictions than what we put on group care facilities, and we see that as being fundamentally wrong.”
We regulate group care facilities far more stringently than we regulate anything else.
The people who attended Tuesday’s meeting largely pushed for more permissive policies. Dale Griesser, president and broker of record for Avison Young, said the bylaw should take so-called discretionary uses — things only allowed with council approval — and make them permitted, and make a range of prohibited land uses discretionary.
Miller said there will be new discretionary uses and new permitted uses, but she hinted that there won’t be a wholesale move in one direction.
The city’s Zoning Forward push started in January 2016. It should be ready for three months of public consultation next January. Miller said staff are following an “aggressive” timeline that she hopes will get a copy before council in June of next year.