87-109 Ashley Street Community Consultation

Jun 28, 2023 |

This project is for a site located at 87-109 Ashley Street. The following uses are envisioned for the site:

Rental apartment building with approximately 136 units
Range of unit types from studio to 2 bedrooms + den
Landscaped courtyard facing Ashley Street
91 vehicular parking spaces with the majority in an underground parking garage and the remaining on the surface
56 bicycle parking spaces

A rezoning would be required to accommodate this development vision.

It is essential to keep stakeholders and community members informed of a project’s development. The Planning Team, key development departments and the owner met with the community on June14th. From that meeting, they will take some key observations back to the Planning Team.

There were 9 attendees in total, some were direct neighbours to the location. Two areas continued to come up in discussion:

Effect of shadows and impacts to privacy and overlook. The team shared the step backs from the 4^thfloor that are being contemplated, and greater alleyway widths to break up visual effect of the height. At ground-level, a pedestrian would see 3 stories because of the deep setbacks starting at the 4^th The team also shared the trade-off with providing these setbacks is a loss of rental units and less square footage per unit
Population growth and concerns regarding the cumulative effect of developments in Ward 3 in general. Attendees wondered about the added impact of this development in the context of other developments occurring across the Ward

The positives of the plans included:

Understood there’s a need for greenery in the neighbourhood. Project team shared that apartment development of this nature is not common anymore. Typically, the courtyard space would be covered with units, but added the courtyard knowing the site is in more of a neighbourhood area
The Site’s potential to accommodate a different land use rather than just commercial at this point.Businesses don’t tend to do well on this site because of how far back it is from Cannon Street and embedded it is within the neighbourhood. This is an indicator the site’s potential for continued commercial use is very limited. There’s an opportunity to have it accommodate more housing and particularly, rental apartments, which addresses the City’s goal to increase rental supply

To follow the updates on the project, you can view their website at https://www.gspgroup.ca/engagement/87-109-ashley-street/. To provide feedback, please complete the comment form on line or pick up copies at the Barton Street Library.