05-13-2017, 01:23 PM
I think the proposal isn't fully known, but there are different ways to interpret it. Does a municipality activating this ability make it apply in all cases within 500m of a station, or does it allow them to choose where decisions made within 500m of a station will be un-OMB-able? I'm thinking a bit of moments like with the restaurant proposal on Ottawa (admittedly not within a transit station), the idea being that council had a proposal, the proposal was supported by staff, the proposal made sense within its context, but council seemed to vote against it because of resident opposition and threat of residents appealing it to the OMB. It might be that this allows council to make their well-thought-out plans unappealable. I know residents who thought that 1Vic was incredibly inappropriate for its site, even the Kaufman conversion, and I would hate to think of council having to work through the change LRT is going to bring under permanent auspices of OMB appeals. In many cases within 500m of ION stations, developments will still require rezoning and overall approval BEFORE they would become unappealable. The ODC site at Roger and Moore is a decent example of a spot within 500m of an ION station (just), where a development has very minimal neighbour impacts, but there are already residents claiming that virtually anything to happen on that site would be inappropriate.