With the recent passing of our official plan, the town’s two go stations are now officially classified as major transit station areas- Main Street GO and Old Elm GO. MTSA’s have the ability to become transit oriented communities (TOC) where increased densities can be built-up around them. Our Main Street GO station and specifically the Edwards Street corridor is one such potential transit oriented community. This past summer after council approved the $7M capital budget in 2022, Edward Street was completely reconstructed with new water mains, storm water, and sewage pipes to accommodate future growth in this area.
I’m bringing the motion forward today on October 1 to get council’s support of staff investing time and energy into developing a block plan for the Edward Street corridor. This would include all lands east of Edward St, south of Millard to Main Street. The reason for doing this now is to create a vision with the public’s consultation for this area that would guide any future development interest. Without this block plan, the town would be at the “mercy “ of developers vision. By being proactive, the block plan motion if approved, will not only engage council, but more importantly the public on what you would like to see in this corridor if it were ever to be redeveloped in the future. This could include mixed uses (commercial, office etc), the potential integration of an elementary school, the type of construction, (i.e. townhomes, mid rise, purpose built rentals, etc.)
To be clear, this is a proactive exercise. To my knowledge, there are no lots east of Edward St for sale at this time in this area but I am certain, in time, changes in ownership probably will occur and we need to be ready.
