Residents say proposed high-density development in St. Catharines an ‘insult’
Developer says vacant church property is underutilized and ‘ideal candidate’ for 532 housing units
Neighbours living near a vacant church property in north St. Catharines slammed a proposed development Monday night for being too big and having the potential to cause traffic chaos.
City council chambers were packed with vocal residents as 10 delegates spoke against the 532unit complex at Scott and Geneva streets north of Fairview Mall, which was home to the church for more than five decades.
“If you pass this, you are going to create a nightmare for us,” said resident Larry Koerner, who has lived on Scott Street for 34 years.
He told councillors it was difficult to understand how the city concluded the area could handle the new development, when the area “can’t handle the traffic” now.
Andy Souter, a 48-year resident of Hewko Street, which runs parallel to Geneva, said developers rely on experts to make many decisions about projects, but those engineers only work in numbers.
“The real experts that should be considered here are the people sitting here in the gallery. We’re the ones that live in this area,” he said.
“We moved there to be in a very nice little community, and I’d love to keep it that way. I’m not against development, but this development is an insult.”
The 1.65-hectare (4.07-acre) site has frontage at 240 Scott St. and 387 and 389 Geneva St.
The proposal calls for a seven-storey apartment building along Scott Street and second building with 13and 15-storey wings behind it. They would hold 521 apartment units, while 11 townhouses would also be built.
The request before council was to amend the city’s official plan and zoning bylaw to change the property to high density residential from low density residential and local neighbourhood institutional.
There was also a request to reduce parking from 1.15 spaces per unit instead of the required 1.25 spaces per unit.
The project was discussed for more than two hours Monday, with council deferring its decision to its next meeting.
Bruce Hall, principal with The Planning Partnership on behalf of owner Scott Street Holdings, told council the site is at a prominent intersection and is underused. In terms of provincial policy, he said it’s the ideal candidate for this type of development.
“It’s a single-use building, formerly a church, with an extensive amount of surface parking, which really isn’t a desirable context within an urban environment,” he said.
“It’s really not being utilized to its fullest extent and there is an opportunity here to create a very meaningful supply of additional, needed housing, which we all know about.”
Hall said the low density and institutional land use designations are a vestige of an earlier time before the properties in the surrounding area were developed. The changes, he said, will bring the site into alignment with the area.
The developers altered the design from what was originally planned through collaboration with the city. Hall said the heights were reduced from 20 storeys to 13 and 15 storeys and the mid-rise building was added along Scott to provide better distribution of density on site and deal with the transition from the surrounding buildings.
Significant landscaping and buffers were added so the site is now 43 per cent landscaping. Surface parking was reduced and a second level of underground parking was added.
But Gillian Barclay, who’s lived in a highrise at 367 Geneva St. for 28 years, said the issue for residents isn’t what the structures look like and whether it’s one building or two buildings. She said the main issue is the high density.
Barclay shared concerns about the capacity of the local infrastructure, such as water and sanitation, and traffic safety, which is already an issue for residents living near the church property.
“Yes, it’s a large concrete area, asphalt, that’s underutilized. But that doesn’t mean that we need to put all of this housing on top of it,” she said, adding changing it to medium density with 163 units in any configuration makes more sense.
“You could put in whatever you want. I think it’s a much better thing than overloading an area that already is at its max.”
Robert Cameron, also a resident at the building, said there are already five multi-unit buildings north of Fairview Mall before Scott and more being planned on the east side.
He said every day there are dangerous incidents with cars turning west into five driveways and adding more traffic will make the road impassible for drivers and emergency vehicles.
“It’s dangerous and it overwhelms an already congested area and is opposed universally by every tenant and homeowner and condo owner who currently resides here,” said Cameron, adding if the plan is passed by council it will be opposed at the Ontario Land Tribunal.
Residents also raised concerns about lack of parking, arguing the assumption people who buy the units will only have one car is not realistic and people will park in area neighbourhoods.
Council began debating the issue before it was deferred because a councillor had to leave for an emergency.
St. Patrick’s Coun. Robin McPherson said the reality is there’s a housing crisis and the city has been told by both the federal and provincial governments it needs to increase density.
“We have a definite responsibility to the residents of today and the residents who are living here. But we also have an obligation to the residents who are going to move here,” she said, adding the population is going to grow significantly in the next 10, 20 and 40 years.
“Housing doesn’t happen overnight. This development has been two years in the process. It’s going to take another two or three years to build once shovels get in the ground. So we can’t keep saying, ‘Well, this isn’t the right spot.’”
But Port Dalhousie Coun. Bruce Williamson said the building will be marketed to people outside Niagara and he doesn’t buy the argument that bigger is better and increasing the population is progress.
“Yes, we are involved in a housing crisis. That does not mean that we just jettison all of our parking standards and not think about the quality of life of residents,” he said.
Williamson said the residents who spoke against the development can’t be characterized as “NIMBYs,” the term for people who say “not in my backyard.”
“They’re not NIMBYs. None of them have said they were adamantly opposed to any kind of development,” he said. “They were willing to look at a development that was reasonable and wasn’t going to have negative repercussions on the neighbourhood.”
Council will continue the debate during its May 13 meeting.
Central Community Church was on the property from 1969 until 2022, when the congregation moved to a new facility in Niagaraon-the-Lake.