Another 190 Richmond Road technical amendment

On April 24, Planning Committee will be asked to approve an omnibus motion of various technical amendments to different zonings around the City. Earlier this year, I noted that one of those would be to amend the zoning at 190 Richmond Rd. to account for the conflict in the zoning raised by the inclusion of a mezzanine level in the townhomes. After putting that in the newsletter for a couple of weeks, I'm not going to push back on that when it comes before us: it's not a change to the overall density or building envelope from what Council approved. If forced to a separate re-zoning vote, it would virtually certainly pass.

Now, there is a second one. It turns out that because the townhome terraces sit on top of the parking garage, which projects to almost a metre above ground in places, the plan doesn't meet with the zoning requirements for set-backs. The conflict is again proposed to be resolved through the omnibus motion, and I'm again comfortable with that. The building has not been changed. Staff would add language along the lines of "an underground garage is permitted within the corner side yard and rear yard setback to a maximum height of 1.0 metre."

Omnibus anomaly reports are intended to make these kinds of changes where the wording of by-law amendments doesn't reflect the intent behind them. It's not, of course, ideal from a transparency perspective, but re-zonings are highly technical once you get into the weeds. Staff are undoubtedly highlighting this change for me well in advance since what we in the community considered an important change to the zoning for the Trailhead site was brought without any community or councillor head's-up to Committee last year as part of a similar omnibus motion. I and the community had a strong reaction to the way that process unfolded. I appreciate staff's sensitivity to not catching us off-guard again.