Planning board opposes high-density housing project in Summerside's north end

Summerside's planning board has unanimously voted against recommending city council approve rezoning of a portion of land in the Greenwood Drive area for high density housing, but the final decision on the development remains in the hands of the full city council.

The vote was taken at a public meeting in the P.E.I. city Tuesday evening. The proposal from Stratford's Flourish Development Group would see about 600 housing units, including around 17 apartments built over the next decade.

More than 60 people crammed into the chamber at city hall, with some standing in the hallway and filling a nearby media room. Cheers erupted from the crowd as the vote was taken to not recommend the zoning for R4 high density development.

"I think I'd feel more relieved if they were certain that they wouldn't be going to R4," said Wendy Gallant, who lives in the area, "but they are still expressing an interest in taking on a portion of that section as R4."

Many residents' concerns focused on traffic and that the intersection at Greenwood Drive and Pope Road may not be able to handle the traffic load. According to documents in the planning meeting package, rezoning the area to high density would result in more than 3,000 vehicles per day, more than double the current traffic load for the area about 1,400 vehicles per day.

"We simply don't seem to have the infrastructure in place. The roads are too busy, our water, sewer I am not sure if that could fully handle it," Gallant said.

About 600 people signed a petition against the development, but Summerside Mayor Dan Kutcher criticized where some signatures came from. Some people who signed the petition put down addresses in Miscouche and Richmond.

"I'm happy and pleased they decided as a planning committee to not approve that to go forward," said Krista MacDougall, who also lives in the Greenwood Drive area.

"We do need housing in Summerside, absolutely, we need to grow, we need to build more housing, and I am certainly not against that. I just think we need to plan for that."

There are buildings in downtown Summerside, MacDougall said, that could be used for housing.

If the project is approved the land would go from R1, single residential homes, to R4 to allow for high-density housing on the 25-hectare site which is currently fields and farmland.

"There was sort of a lack of details as far as the development goes," said Coun. Justin Doiron, who represents the area where the development is proposed.

"Was it going to be this many buildings, this many units, were any or all of them to be affordable or low income. That information was not at our fingertips."

Planning board did vote to recommend changing portions of the land from R1 to R2 to allow for duplexes to be constructed.

Ahead of the meeting Kaley O'Brien, executive director of the Summerside Chamber of Commerce, said there needs to be more housing options for workers in the city.

"High-density projects overall is definitely what Summerside is needing. We need to see more people coming to Summerside and be able to house them in order to meet our labour shortage ," said O'Brien, adding in a recent survey given to chamber of commerce members 30 per cent responded housing is impacting their ability to recruit and retain staff. 

"Someone commented they had to put staff in their own basement to meet a labour need."

Before the vote was taken Kutcher talked about a need for affordable and high-density housing in the city and walked through the information presented for well over 30 minutes.

A member of the crowd criticized the mayor for lecturing Greenwood Drive residents attending the meeting.

Developers ready to try again

Both Gallant and MacDougall are in favour of affordable housing in the Summerside area, but worried the company wouldn't actually provide affordable rents, they said.

John Mantha, consultant for the development group, said the recommendation not to rezone the Greenwood Drive area to high density is just democracy at work.

"We're just going to have to go back if the motion is defeated, we will just the to go back to the drawing board," said Mantha.

"We heard what the residents had to say at the first meeting and we'll just have to put something together that will hopefully satisfy everybody."

The final decision on the development will be made at Summerside's next monthly council meeting on July 4.