Rezoning requested for apartment building
Plans for a new seven-storey apartment building at Armour Road may take a step forward Monday if city councillors approve a rezoning.
The local developer, Parkview Homes, is proposing a building with 76 market-rent apartments. At a committee meeting on Monday, councillors will be asked to consider a rezoning to allow it.
The building would go on a 2.1-acre expanse on the northeast corner of Armour Road and Cunningham Boulevard in the city’s northeast end.
The land is mostly vacant with a house and accessory buildings that would be demolished, according to a new city staff report to councillors.
The land is made up of two parcels: 1176 Armour Rd. (which Parkview Homes bought in 2009) and an adjacent parcel at 1182 Armour Rd. (bought in 2019).
Parkview Homes had initially planned a two-storey building at 1176 Armour Rd. in 2017, with commercial space on the ground floor and apartments above.
But that building was never constructed. Last year Parkview Homes bought the neighbouring land and revised the plan for up to seven storeys with apartments only and no commercial space.
The rezoning is needed because the land is currently zoned for commercial or lowdensity residential use.
City staff approves of the plan, stating in a report that the building would complement the existing neighbourhood and would further the goal of intensifying built-up areas of Peterborough.
At an open house at the end of August 2019 at Ashburnham Reception Centre on Armour Road, about 50 area residents saw the plans and spoke to developers. Some people were concerned about driveway entrances along Armour Road, for example, while others wanted to know whether the development might harm the adjacent Thompson Creek.
Those concerns were addressed in a new site plan, the new report states, and the buffer zones between the building and the creek are considered adequate to keep the creek unpolluted. City planner Caroline Kimble wrote in an email to The Examiner that the buffer varies from 10.88 metres at the south end of the property to 35.1 m at the north, with a further 1.5 m setback proposed.
People had until June 8 to submit any further concerns to the city in writing, but none were received.
Parkview Homes is also planning a half-dozen condo and apartment developments around the city, notably a complex of 62 condos near Jackson Creek Meadows on Parkhill Road.
The developer is also planning 187 apartments on Lansdowne Street West, just west of Kawartha Heights Boulevard.
The virtual general committee meeting begins at 6 p.m. Monday and can be viewed on the city’s website.