A condominium townhouse development planned for the northwest and southwest corners of Mavrinac Boulevard and Wellington Street East is nearing council approval.
Meeting at the committee level last week, local lawmakers gave the green light to approve in principle a site plan that will create 210 townhouse units in the area, plus a one single detached unit, on the vacant lots.
Plans for a six-storey seniors’ residence to complete the northeast development will be subject to its own approval process.
The subdivision has been in the works since 2017.
“The townhouse buildings framing both development blocks, including ‘dual frontage’ units to provide a strong urban edge along Wellington Street East and Mavrinac Boulevard,” said Stephen Corr, senior development planner for the Town of Aurora in a report to council. “The back-to-back townhouses are internalized to the site ensuring that the denser housing forms are transitioned from the adjacent surrounding low-density developments. Adequate pedestrian and vehicular access are provided to both development sites, including the provision of an internal sidewalk network throughout the sites.
“Both development sites include a private parkette to provide shared amenity space and playgrounds for residents. Additionally, adequate amenity space is provided for each unit in the form of traditional rear yards for the detached dwelling and internal townhouse blocks (not abutting Wellington and Mavrinac), enlarged terraces on the dual frontage townhouse blocks and balconies on the back-to-back units.”
Speaking to the development last week, consultant David Stewart told council that they were supportive of the recommendations in the staff report.
“This project is intended to provide a wide range of housing,” he said. “We have got a wide range of townhouses and the singles in the subdivision. The townhouses will be developed by condominium and there will be a one-sided single-detached home as part of the condominium project.
“The townhouses are quality townhouses with a mix of materials, with brick, stone accents, hardy board-type wood treatment…the project is ready to go. If you have been out there, the earthworks have already commenced and we’re hoping to start construction sometime this summer on the houses.”
The development in question was last before council in June 2021.
There, the issue was to amend the land from its previous zoning of business park lands to low to medium density residential. Concerns were also raised about the height of the proposed seniors residence and how it might impact the views of the existing Mavrinac community.
“Nobody will see the apartment building from the north side of Kane,” said consultant Don Given. “It is not an imposing building and will not become an intrusion into the neighbourhood visually. [This] is a genuine effort on the part of my client to fit into the neighbourhood. We have responded to the concerns raised by the neighbours.”
Neighbours voiced few concerns at the time, but among the issues raised by council included parking, and a perceived shortage of parkland in relation to the number of residents that will call this area home.
“The number of people who live there, the dense housing, the park needs to be much bigger – I know there are bigger parks in the area, but this is going to be the neighbourhood park and we would not be serving our future residents well to give them [so small] a park,” said Councillor Wendy Gaertner at the time. “I probably won’t be on council when the residents are living in these homes. I predict that a lot of people are going to be very unhappy and they will be coming to council with their complaints. I know we are supposed to be doing intensification, but, to me, this is way too intense development and I just think it is wrong.”
Brock Weir is a federally funded Local Journalism Initiative reporter at The Auroran
