With Kingston, Ont., in the midst of a housing crisis, there’s a new subdivision planned in the city’s east end that has a prime view of the Cataraqui River.
The proposed housing development will be before the City of Kingston’s Planning Committee on Thursday.
The site, on Highway 15, is sandwiched between the Cataraqui River and a tall wall of rock.
“There’s going to be 243 new houses going into the quarry. They’ll be a mixture of single-family semis and townhouses,” said Barry Smith, vice-president of Taggart Investments, which is part of the group developing the land.
The Taggart Group has already sunk approximately $10 million into the site, including filling up the quarry.
Smith says that there are challenges associated with this unique spot, such as the tall rock wall and the Cataraqui River which lay on either side of the site.
There are detractors to the project, who feel the project isn’t appropriate for the area.
“I think that a development is appropriate at that site. The development that’s proposed is way too dense, oversized, too close to the river — there are real issues with the rock and whether the rock is going to be protected from people who live below it,” said Vicki Schmolka, a Kingston resident who has been vocal in her opposition to the proposal
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However, as far as public concerns go, Smith says that they have heard some of the pushback but that they feel they have appropriately addressed the concerns in the development proposal.
“We feel that we’ve got a solution for the walls and we’ve proposed that to the city and the city is on board with our proposal,” he said.
He also said that they’ve addressed concerns about possible flooding due to its proximity to the river.
According to the city’s director of planning services, Tim Park, Parks Canada was consulted about the 30-metre setback from the river and said that they had no issues with it.
Further, he said, work has been done on the wall to provide extra safety and annual maintenance of the wall would be on the onus of the developer as part of potential approval.
“We stand behind it. We feel we’ve done our review to a thorough level with the necessary professional reviews,” said Park.
On Thursday night the city’s planning committee will review the report which recommends that they approve the requested zoning bylaw and official plan amendments.
If they move forward, the project will make its way to a council agenda for approval.
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