Now the ‘tick box’ on the Gantt chart of the 202 Second St planning application has been ‘ticked’ let’s look at the consequence of this part of the process. The Public Meeting has taken place and the application moves forward against a huge outcry from four former Mayors the local Heritage group and many Citizens. Fair to say this is not a popular project and suggestions that the developer be run out of Town on a rail may be forthcoming.

The Mayor and Council are in a tough spot. Wanting development and the ensuing tax revenue and balancing that against the threat of a nine storey Soviet style modernistic apartment building in a place that will remove parking from the Downtown area.  As with everything else in Municipal politics this is a problem of unintended consequences and outdated regulations.

Cobourg’s Zoning Bylaw was passed in October 2003 – 22 years ago. A great deal of things have happened since then including the changing face of Cobourg’s Downtown. Any development in the area consisted of building replacements – Mr. Submarine for one. In that case the builder resisted the plan to conform with the neighbourhood and refused to build a two story sympathetic structure and held fast for a 1.5 storey facsimile. A local large furniture store was converted into condominiums and little has changed since.

Now with the explosion of investment money and the “Affordability Crisis” people are looking to maximise investment in whatever sells. Hence the desire to use a parking lot in the middle of Town to build as many small apartments as the land can support. Zoning be damned because in most case, with a developer friendly Ontario Land Tribunal on their side they can ignore established rules and regulations and all of the local protestations.

BUT the Town has an Ace up their sleeve. 

An Interim Control By-Law (ICBL) is a tool available to Ontario municipalities as part of the Planning Act. An ICBL places a temporary “freeze” on the development of certain lands while a municipality is studying or reviewing its land use policies. The restrictions can only be imposed for one year, with a maximum extension of a second year. Municipalities have had the ability to pass interim control bylaws since the Planning Act came into force on August 1, 1983. Interim control bylaws put a temporary freeze on many land uses while the municipality is studying or reviewing its policies. No notice or hearing is required prior to its passing—the municipality need only direct that a study be undertaken with respect to land-use planning in the specified area.

In an article written in the Ontario Home Builders Association read it here it is noted just how strong a tool the ICBL is.

“It is a powerful tool,” notes a prominent GTA builder, requesting anonymity and whose firm has been inordinately affected by the 2016 Richmond Hill interim control bylaw in a key development area at Yonge and Bernard streets. “It effectively strips all sites in that designated area of zoning, so no one can do anything, not even a renovation permit, unless the wording of that ICBL specifically allows it. As one of my professors once said, it can be a very Draconian measure in how sweeping and powerful it is.”

When the developers of 202 Second St. came to Town their planners studied Cobourg’s outdated Zoning bylaw and decided not only to follow it but decided to rip the guts out of it by asking for outlandish variances – as they are allowed to do. But in doing so it has exposed just how outdated this ZBL is. 

We all recognise, since the entry of Walmart and their destruction of zoned Industrial lands on Strathy Rd. that commercial development is not going to happen Downtown. The available lands in the Downtown will be occupied by residential development, so we have to plan for it. The existing zoning for residential building in Downtown is unrealistic for the present conditions and fails to provide for adequate parking and allows concessions from the normal rules just because development is Downtown.

For instance the 202 Second St. application has less than 50% of the required commercial space required in a ‘mixed residential’ building could get away with only supplying half of the parking needed for the residents and is six storeys too high. This must be stopped until we can reset the rules. The existing ZBL allows for unrealistic development applications in the downtown! 

Resetting the rules will not be hard or slow down development. The latest efficiency report from the CAO of Cobourg states that the new Zoning Bylaw is 80% complete. We should be not accepting any applications for redevelopment in the Downtown until we have sorted out the rules for development in the Downtown.

We also all recognise that the parking in the Downtown is a mess and should be looked at again. The previous parking study was controversial for many reasons, but mainly because if you want to study parking with a survey, you survey in the Summer not the Winter, as they did. 

These two big reasons – realigning the ZBL with modern standards and sorting out the parking problems, are enough justification for an ICBL to be imposed on the Main Central (MC) commercial area of the Downtown.

JUST STOP RIGHT NOW GET THE RULES RIGHT AND THEN ALLOW DEVELOPMENT.