Category: London Ontario

August Neighbourhood Newsletter‏

Sherwood Forest School Site

City staff will be mailing a notice of the next City-led community meeting on the proposed re-zoning of the school site. Keep an eye out for it. The goal continues to be for staff to have a recommendation in front of the City’s Planning Committee this fall.

London Plan

The London Plan is the city’s new land use plan. It is to be presented for approval to the new council in late winter or early spring 2015. There are many changes to land use planning which have the potential to have an impact on all neighbourhoods including ours. More about these changes in future e-mails, but here are just two:

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Handouts from June 16 AGM

The slides from the AGM and meeting on the Sherwood Forest School site are available. If you have questions want more information please do not hesitate to contact Sandy or any member of the Executive. Please also contact the City Planner on the file, Brian Turcotte.

The city has agreed that apartments will not be one of the permitted uses in the re-zoning change they will present to City Council. The city staff have also agreed to hold another city lead community meeting sometime later in the summer before they make their formal report to the City Council’s Planning and Environment Committee.

The minutes from the June 16, 2014 meeting are also available.

London Clean and Green

London Clean and Green  will be held on Saturday, April 20.  Londoners will work together to help “clean & green” our city’s neighbourhoods and parks and the Thames River.  If you are interested in participating,  you can find a list of gathering places and register at:
http://www.cleangreen.london.ca/clean_green_registration_info.html

Great Near Campus Neighbourhoods (Student Housing)

Good news from the City Council meeting of this week. Council managed to pass the amendments to implement the recommendations in the Great Near Campus plan (i.e. to control the number of bedrooms in multi unit housing, parking, landscaped open space). Councillor Branscombe was also able to get the ball rolling on the possibility of limiting the number of rental licenses issued for areas where single family homes are being converted to rentals. City staff will report back to City Council on this. A limit on licenses will be helpful as it is expected that the GNCN amendments that were passed will be appealed to the Ontario Municipal Board by at least one builder of multi-family housing around the University. When appealed, the amendments do not take force and effect.

The minutes of the Council meeting (June 26) should be posted shortly on the city’s web site – http://www.london.ca/d.aspx?s=/Meetings/Default/meetingpackages.htm

Update on Near Campus Neighbourhoods (student housing)‏

From the Free Press –

A plan to tighten zoning restrictions in the areas near Western University and Fanshawe College to eliminate problems related to over-intensification of housing needs more work, the city’s planning committee decided Monday. The plan, which calls for a limit of three bedrooms in multi-unit dwellings, down from five, in areas adjacent to the institutions is being proposed. Along with other measures, the idea is to prevent too many people living in premises whose parking and other amenities cannot support them. But details relating to height restrictions and other measures prompted planning committee members to send it back to planning staff for further review. The planning committee chair said he expects it will return with modifications in September.

It will more likely be late fall (not September) before this comes back to the Committee for discussion.