Checking in with the Mayor
Walter Sendzik talks about the challenges facing the city in 2018 and parking in the snow.
Deciding whether a massive development proposal in Port Dalhousie should be part of St. Catharines’ future is one of the major challenges facing city council this year.
Mayor Walter Sendzik said council will have to think about the long term when considering the Union Waterfront development project.
“Whatever is built there is going to be there for not the next five years, the next 10 years, potentially for the next 100 years,” he said during his monthly online chat #AskSendzik at The Standard Friday.
“As a council and as a community, we’ve got to look at the design of our community much farther along than the next 10 years.”
The 0.6 hectare property in the heart of Port Dalhousie’s commercial district has a site-specific plan attached to it due to a 2010 decision by the Ontario Municipal Board. It allows for a 17-storey tower with 80 units, a theatre and a hotel. Owner Fortress Real Developments has applied to the city to lower the storeys to 14 and spread the building out more with terraced floors and 220 apartments. The development includes a public courtyard, commercial space and a community room.
The city held a special council meeting before Christmas on the issue that drew more than 240 people who spoke both in favour and against the project.
Sendzik said council will be receiving a staff report with a recommendation in the first quarter of the year.
In many respects, the project is of a scale of which the city hasn’t seen in a long time, he said.
“This is new to a lot of people as well, not just in Port Dalhousie but in the city in terms of the size and the scope of it. So how do we make an informed decision around all the concerns — parking, congestion, traffic, size? Those all are going to play a role in the decision council has to make.”
Sendzik said it will be interesting to see how city staff deal with the proposal because under the provincially mandated places to grow act there are density targets and an emphasis on vertical growth. “We have no land around us in which to grow. We can only grow up, but it’s the scalability of that growth that a lot of people are concerned about,” Sendzik said. “So looking forward to the staff report. That’s going to be a big one.”
Inter-municipal transit is another major issue Sendzik said council will be dealing with.
“We have to get it right. It’s time,” he said. “The more and more people I talk to in the community, inter-municipal transit is very high on their radar for those who use public transit. They want to see an integrated system.”
Other big issues will be another development in Port Dalhousie by Rankin and the Port Dalhousie secondary plan that will take up a lot of discussion.
“We have some big pieces that if we get them right, it’s going to really position ourself as a city for the next 25, 30, 100 years,” he said.
During the chat Friday, Sendzik discussed the city’s attempts to get residents to comply with S’No Parking program which urges residents to move their vehicles off the road for snowplows. He also answered Standard readers’ questions about why the city has low quality livestreaming of council meetings, why the city doesn’t have outdoor skating rinks, the city’s cycling initiatives and more.
The full chat with the mayor can be viewed at www.stcatharinesstandard.ca.
Readers can send questions in for the next chat in February by Tweeting ahead of time with the hashtag #AskSendzik or emailing kwalter@ postmedia.com. kwalter@postmedia.com twitter.com/karena_standard