Tag: planning

Have a say in keeping our neighbourhood strong

The City of London will be hosting a Public Information Meeting to introduce and seek the public’s comments on its initial DRAFT Terms of Reference for a review of the Great Near Campus Neighbourhoods Strategy.

The Great Near Campus Neighbourhoods Strategy was introduced in 2008.  City Council has directed City staff to develop the Terms of Reference, in consultation with community stakeholders, to undertake a review of the Strategy. The focus of this review is to identify next steps and actions to implement the Strategy, and to review the successes and challenges in the Near Campus Neighbourhoods.  We hope to maintain the balance in Orchard Park/Sherwood Forest.  Other neighbourhoods near the University, particularly Broughdale and University Heights, no longer have a balance between short term and long term residents.

Meeting details include:

Date: April 1st, 2015
Time: 7:00 to 9:00 p.m.
Location: 300 Dufferin Avenue, City Hall, 2nd Floor, Committee Room #3

You can find more information about the Great Near Campus Neighbourhoods Strategy at:
http://www.london.ca/business/Planning-Development/current-topics/Pages/GreatNearCampus.aspx

If you can’t make the meeting, comments on the Draft can be sent to the City Planner handling this file, Justin Adema, jadema@london.ca

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:

Continue reading “August Neighbourhood Newsletter‏” →

Great Near Campus Neighbourhoods OMB Hearing

The city was successful at the Ontario Municipal Board. The Great Near Campus Neighbourhood policies are now in force and effect. This means that new construction in the core of the area including stacked townhouses, semis, duplexes and four-plexes in our area may only have a maximum of three bedrooms per unit (i.e., a duplex could have 3 bedrooms in each unit for a total of 6). More intense uses will be directed to transportation nodes and corridors. Other parts of the policy dictate how much parking and pavement can be on the site as well as how large the bedrooms are in relation to the floor space. Overall, this is seen as a positive for our area.

You can get the background and reports on the policies at http://www.london.ca/d.aspx?s=/Planning/studentstrategy.htm

Plan for Medway Valley

The city is near to concluding a plan for additional access in the Medway Valley north of Fanshawe Park Road. This matter will go before a committee of city council on April 9th at a public participation meeting. Anyone can speak at the meeting or write a letter to be included on the agenda. You can find the draft report of city staff at:

Click to access MedwayTrailProcess-Summary.pdf

Anyone is welcomed to review the report and submit comments to city staff. City staff have asked for comments to be received by February 21st. You can send them to Bonnie Bergsma, at bbergsma@london.ca

The trail planning process used for this section of the Medway will be used for our section of the Medway when the update to the Conservation Master Plan starts this year.

Coming in February

February 5th at city hall will have two matters of interest to Orchard Park/Sherwood Forest residents.

There will be a report from city staff on whether or not a local improvement levy is a way to finance a possible city acquisition of the Sherwood Forest School site.

The other matter will be on the Planning and Environment Committee agenda that day. It will deal with the possible use of a court ruling in Oshawa (called Howden) that could limit the number of homes turning into rental properties in London. It will be the first step in a city staff review of the matter. The London North Community Association has been leading this effort. LNCA received a legal opinion from a Toronto law firm that the Oshawa ruling does apply to London. They have also met with City staff to share the legal opinion.

LCNA held two town halls earlier in January to discuss this issue. Click here for the slides from those presentations.