I remember when I was a kid how I’d spend time with pencil and paper and sketch out my development plans for our family home and property should we ever strike it rich by finding oil in the backyard. I guess it was all part and parcel of being an introvert, and therefore a loner. And I guess it passed the time on those summer holidays of my youth.
So when Eric Withers, Renfrew’s Director of Development and Environment/Town Planner/Deputy-CAO — a truly acronym defying title — opens his microphone to reveal planning progress involving development of town lands, my interest in a town council meeting literally sky-rockets. It’s worth the price of the ticket right there. If they let you in.
Director Withers shared with council plans for the development of an area of town referred to as Renfrew East, a quadrilateral parcel of lands bordered by O’Brien Road to the northwest, Gillan Road to the southwest, the town boundary to the southeast, and Highway 17 to the northeast. So, basically, from a person-on-the-street perspective, go to the Walmart/No Frills corridor along O’Brien Road, and sort of look the other way, across the street, at the lands on the other side. Or maybe even better, take a walk down the Algonquin Trail, which runs right through the centre of the proposed development. These two descriptions are not completely adequate or accurate, but it’s enough to give one a general idea.
The land is mostly vacant and/or unoccupied, and most of it is zoned as industrial from a planning perspective on land use. The town, however, has taken a serious look at this zoning designation and determined that it represents an “over-supply,” of industrial-zoned lands within Renfrew. Given the present and perceived future needs of the community, it’s felt by Renfrew Town Staff that the land would better serve the community if it were to be re-zoned as mixed-use, as in residential and residential/commercial. This determination wasn’t made during a lunch-hour conversation, or on the back of a napkin at Tim’s, but rather is the result of consultative studies by planning/engineering firms who do this sort of thing as their main menu item. So it’s all legit.
There are actually two projects at play simultaneously. The Renfrew land development scheme, and the Ministry of Transportation planning to incorporate Renfrew’s access to the future four-lanes Of Highway 417, and the necessary interchange to be built to replace the current intersection of O’Brien Road with the current two-lanes Highway 17. The Renfrew project actually benefits from a synergy between the two, as the interchange requirements require certain transportation features that compliment the flow of traffic through the area, including potential traffic flow if the interchange were to be shut down in an emergency situation, such as a major accident. And so being able to piggy-back on the efforts of the MOT, not to mention the cash of the province, just makes good and efficient sense for the folks over at Fort Renfrew involved with planning and development.
The provincial MTO requirements include a permanent closure of the northwest terminus of Whitton Road, at O’Brien Road. That is, after all, right in the thick of the new interchange, so there’d be no way for those two roads to meet given the traffic flow requirements dictated by that interchange. That present intersection is right on the border of the Renfrew development, so incorporating that reality into the municipal planning is a given. But while the O’Brien-Whitton intersection will be gone, access from Whitton to O’Brien, and vice-versa, will remain, only it’ll look a lot different. And that’s the part of the overall picture that involves the Renfrew development plan.
The Renfrew study, authored by BTE, or BT Engineering, contains a comprehensive look a the lands themselves, the natural features, and all the other things that a responsible assessment should and must include. The firm identified a series of options, all backed by engineering assessments and map work/legends attached. They then put these different alternatives through a methodology check that weighed the pros and cons of each proposal against the criteria outlined in the methodology. Not back-of-napkin stuff, but real geographic science, although both geography and science teachers would blanch at that term.
At the end of that process, an evaluation rubric, or matrix, or grid, or whatever the hell you want to call it, recommended that one alternative, among the several studied, would offer the best solution based upon the data collected and analyzed. And so, as such, I introduce you to Renfrew’s recommended course of action, aka Alternative D.
The selected proposal envisions a mixed-usage of lands that are currently not occupied, sitting vacant, or serving as agricultural fields. Part of the package includes extensions of current Renfrew roadways, to be supported by brand-new roadways that will service the area. It features components of environmental, drainage, sewer/water, and transportation infrastructure, all things that could easily be plugged into Renfrew’s current service infrastructure grid. The one really appealing thing is that once the shovels dig into the ground, there will be no discoveries of mystery infrastructure from times long ago that were never recorded or mapped, so no significant cost over-runs will bite us in the ass as this project moves forward. That, all by itself, is refreshing news.
But these things cost money, and a lot of it. That’s something we don’t have much of, if any of, at least by the look of things.
First of all, anything related to that highway interchange is going to be footed by the province, and since there’s some overlap, Renfrew will benefit from having Big Brother actually foot some of the development costs because that work is going to be done anyway by the MTO. So there’s that.
As to the rest of it, the Renfrew-specific part, there would have to be an expectation that the land in question would be developed by, well, developers. Companies willing to swoop in and do the heavy-lifting after purchasing the land from the town, but still required to comply with the aspects and conditions of the plan, known as the Renfrew East Secondary Plan. That’s nothing new and it’s often how things get done. Renfrew gets cash and municipal taxpayers in exchange for a lands transfer and development of un-used or minimally-used land. Renfrew would extend its municipal infrastructure to the lands, which will feature exclusive residential areas and mixed-use areas, parkland and green areas, drainage systems, etc.
So who would buy/develop this land? The short answer is plenty of folks would, as developer companies abound. And Renfrew is the new frontier, with Highway 417 making its incremental march into this part of the Ottawa Valley. Think of the Highway 400 corridor coming north out of Toronto. When I was a mere whisp of a lad, Barrie and Orilia were just places you whizzed by on your way to somewhere else. Today, Barrie is getting larger and larger, and Orillia isn’t the quaint little Lake Couchiching/Lake Simcoe place it once was. Barrie was once about the same size as North Bay. Today it sits with a population of 147,000, with Orillia coming in at 30,500. Although not a perfect comparison — Ottawa is not Toronto — it still has me thinking that Barrie-Orillia is a reasonable model of expectation or extrapolation for Arnprior-Renfrew, although at a reduced scale. Could we ever see an Arnprior of 40,000 people, and a Renfrew of 25,000 people?
Nevertheless, developers will fall all over themselves to jump into this opportunity, which in a positive sense gives Renfrew some leverage into selling price and conditions attached to any purchase. But whoever it is that gets the nod for development, they still have to follow the details set out in Alternative D.
What about timelines?
Residents can expect to see preparation work being done on and related to the highway interchange within the next 3-5 years, so that means the Whitton-O’Brien meeting will cease to exist within that window. The Renfrew development will have a longer timeline, and may begin some time after, dependant upon a number of things, like further study, consults, planning and design, and engineering. One way or another, it wouldn’t be a terrible leap to suggest that we might see physical evidence of this within the next 5-10 years.
Traffic circles, or round-about, are just about the stupidest form of traffic-flow infrastructure ever imagined or developed. Except they’re not.
There’s a reason why they’re used around the world, in communities big and small. I think it’s because they make sense. So try not to take what you hear at the Horton Dump — random selection of a rural landfill to make a point, no offence to Horton — with a grain of salt. And please don’t get the torches and pitchforks ready if you see that the plan envisions the possibilities of roundabouts at several intersections that currently have traffic signals. Again, this would be in response to the MTO demand that there be a consistent traffic flow requirement as part of its own plan, a requirement that would keep heavy highway traffic flowing in the case of a highway shut-down.
These are exciting times. This was an exciting report. And all good for the future of Renfrew.
NEWSMAGRENFREW 