Township eyes growth potential in Wellesley Village
More residential and employment land the focus of boundary rationalization review
SEEING DEVELOPMENT POTENTIAL IN the village of Wellesley, the township is concentrating on redrawing the urban map there as it does a boundary review of its settlements.
The goal is to expand the size of the township’s largest community to allow for residential and employment lands, while removing land unlikely to be developed within some of the smaller settlements.
That plan was not universally embraced, however, at a public meeting June 20 in Crosshill council chambers.
Township officials stressed that it’s an ongoing process, with public input playing a part in the final decision. Wellesley has in fact been at this for two years, taking advantage of a one-time opportunity under the Region of Waterloo’s new official plan to rationalize settlement boundaries – making changes to the land within the settlement areas to better reflect opportunities for growth and development.
It’s a net-zero process, however, as the overall amount of land within settlements must remain the same: land added somewhere must be taken from somewhere else, whether within the same settlement or from another part of the township.
As a formal amendment to Wellesley’s own official plan, the process involves mandatory public meetings such as the one held last week. Things got rolling in June 2015, with planning staff contacting landowners for each of the properties affected by the proposed rationalization for feedback.
The process will take time, said township planner Geoff VanderBaaren.
“It is not something that we are going to rush through, it has significant implication to a lot of people you know both positive and negative so we want to make sure that we give everyone the opportunity to have their say,” he explained. Currently, the township sees realignments that would remove several blocks throughout the township to make way for expansion on the lands to the west of Lawrence Street and lands on the east side of Greenwood Hill Road to direct the majority of additional growth to the urban settlement area of Wellesley.
When evaluating the removal of lands from settlement, staff looked to establish that there is no long-term need for the lands, current use is unlikely to change, the land has servicing limitations, lands are impacted by future roads and they must lay on the outer limits of the settlement.
When looking at lands to add to the settlement, the criteria include that developmental potential exists, land-use compatibility is achievable, servicing is available, use is appropriate in both the short and long term, and the land satisfies a long-term employment need.
The expansion would increase Wellesley village’s borders by 85 acres, with 18 acres of employment land and the rest designated as residential lands to yield approximately 1,100 additional residents.
The goal also is to further focus growth in the Wellesley urban area to take away from rural settlement areas where land is on private services and growth is limited.
The report indicates that the Wellesley sewage treatment plant has a capacity to service an additional 1,300 people, while the water supply system can accommodate an additional 5,600 persons.
Despite the information presented, residents remained skeptical.
Joyce Barker, a licensed
the dozens of kilometres of concrete sound barriers on the north part of the highway, a year-long pilot project is underway for a distinctly different looking, and functioning, portion of doublewalled barrier 15 metres long and 6.5 metres high. It’s called a SmogStop barrier.
It’s easy to pick out. Besides being a metre or so taller than adjacent barriers, this patented, trademarked technology consists of 15 clear acrylic panels that comprise the outer wall of the barrier, topped by an aerodynamically designed louver that brings polluted air through the doubled walled barrier.
The opening at the top leads to a 25-cm air channel that separates the outer and inner wall.
A natural air pressure difference exists across the wall, with a low pressure created by the wind as it passes over the wall and generates a wake. This pressure difference causes ground-level air from the highway side to be drawn up the outside of the front wall, to the louvered top, then inside, down the channel.
This movement is key. The inner wall is coated with what’s called a photocatalyst, a chemical substance naturally activated by sunlight. As air falls down the channel, it passes over the photocatalyst. This causes a chemical reaction that results in noxious nitrogen oxide – the major component of smog (in this case, from vehicle emissions on the highway) – quickly breaking down into benign, harmless nitrogen and oxygen by the time it gets to the bottom of the wall.
The Bayview-Highway 401 installation of SmogStopis a pilot project led by University of Guelph engineer Bill Van Heyst and post-doctoral researcher David Wood. They started working on this together in 2009 with a private company, Envision SQ, when Wood was still an undergraduate.
Over time, other partners became part of the project, with the help of the university’s business development office, the Catalyst Centre. Participants – all Ontario based – include the province’s Ministry of Transportation, barrier manufacturer Armtec, and acrylic manufacturer Evonik. The air movement tests to determine the effectiveness of the SmogStop noise barrier were conducted in the University of Ontario Institute of Technology’s wind tunnel.
In the lab, this system has cut oxides of nitrogen by 30 per cent. And because the technology is based on a natural pressure difference, the whole system operates passively, without power.
“It’s huge to get 15 metres of space for research on the 401, without this technology being proven elsewhere,” says Van Heyst. “The province is eager to come up with ways to address its environmental problems and do something innovative about air quality. We are glad to be part of it.”