Peterborough Mayor Jeff Leal will release the report from the Mayor’s Task Force for Housing Creation on Monday afternoon (November 4) during a media event at the site of a housing development in Peterborough’s East City.
The mayor announced the creation of the task force comprised of builders and housing development professionals last October.
“We need further input from the development community on any other opportunities for municipal support and to consider barriers to accelerating housing starts that may be outside of municipal control,” he said at the time.
In January, the City of Peterborough announced the members of the task force: Paul Bennett of Ashburnham Realty, Chelsea Combot of Ontario Aboriginal Housing Services, Brian Fenton of Peterborough Homes, Hans Jain of Atria Development Corporation, Hope Lee of Peterborough Housing Corporation, Rebecca Schillemat of Peterborough and the Kawarthas Home Builders Association, Brad Smith of AON Inc., and Susan Zambonin of Habitat for Humanity Peterborough & Kawartha Region.
“Task force members were tasked with recommending specific actions that the City of Peterborough can take to facilitate the construction of 4,700 new housing units by 2031,” states a media release from the city announcing Monday’s media event, which will take place at 367 Rogers Street.
That’s the site of Ashburnham Realty’s six-storey building currently under construction along the Rotary Greenway Trail just north of Robinson Street, joining two other completed buildings along the trail at Hunter Street East as part of a residential-commercial development.
The building was originally planned to be three storeys as part of a four-building development. However, last September, Ashburnham Realty applied to the city for a “minor variance” to increase its height to six storeys, while reducing the total number of buildings in the development from four to three, leaving the total number of units unchanged.
The city approved the height increase, much to the consternation of some nearby East City residents, who have expressed concern about the increasing number of multi-storey buildings in a neighbourhood that primarily consists of detached homes and low-rise buildings.
“Long gone are the days that any builder will build a two or three-storey building,” Ashburnham Realty owner Paul Bennett told kawarthaNOW at the time. “It’s never going to happen again. The option is we get some intensification and go up or we won’t get any buildings.”
Just one block to the west of the Ashburnham Realty development, TVM Group is proposing a new 10-storey residential-commercial development beside Mark Street United Church on Hunter Street East.
Toronto-based TVM Group is the company behind two other nearby East City developments: East City Condos and the St. Joseph’s Hospital redevelopment.
Watch kawarthaNOW for more information about the task force’s report after it is released.
