Heather Wright/The Independent

St. Clair Township has given the green light to a Murray Street apartment building just two weeks after it put the development on hold.

The township’s deputy mayor says the developer dealt with community and council concerns.

Vensuris Design and Build, which built the new medical clinic on Murray Street, presented its plans for the development to council Feb. 17. 

The first proposal was a mix of one and two bedroom units with starting at 735 square feet according to the drawings submitted to council.

There would be a new driveway onto Murray and parking for 109 vehicles, about 21 less than required under St. Clair Township’s zoning rules. 

Jordon Folkens, a planning consultant with BM Ross, told council the plot of land is a good spot for the apartment building.

“It’s fully serviced. You don’t have to extend any infrastructure to service this site, which makes good use of municipal infrastructure that’s in place,” he said.

“It’s within walking distance of a number of commercial facilities, park land, the waterfront, which is something we want to see. We want to create walkable communities that are fully serviced.”

The land needs a zoning change to allow the building.

Neighbours in the area voiced concerns about the amount of parking, past drainage issues and shadowing impacts on nearby homes.

Councillor Pat Brown said “The medical center is under serviced with parking spaces, and now you’re saying that you might get an easement through their parking lot.” That would reduce the parking further, he suggested. Deputy Mayor Steve Miller also expressed concern. 

March 3, the developer’s consultant returned to council with a new plan; a five storey building with an extra parking – 125 spaces in total – to meet the municipality’s parking requirements. “The township requires 1.5 spaces per unit, and we’ve changed the plan to provide the required parking both the standard parking as well as the accessible parking spaces,” said Folkens. 

The builder also says temporary parking built for the construction of the apartment building will be turned over to the medical clinic, easing some of the council’s concerns there.

Folkens says concerns about a shadow being thrown on nearby homes should be reduced with one storey removed. “I really feel that this is more of an appropriate transition than what’s even allowed in the current bylaw,” he told council. “The shadow impacts will be very minimal and would be limited to really winter time in the rear portion of Paget Street.

And they approved, passing the changes without questions, with Mayor Jeff Agar calling them “great improvements.”

Deputy Mayor Steve Miller agreed. “Thank you for the prompt and positive response…And I see no reason why we would turn this down now that you’ve made those changes,’ he said. Miller suggested if the council held up the changes now, it would likely only delay the project since the Ontario Land Tribunal would likely give the development the green light to build if the issue went to a hearing.