Housing and signs dominate council meeting, as St. John’s welcomes Coun. Greg Noseworthy

The City of St. John’s bi-weekly council meeting started off a little more formal on Nov. 12, with the swearing-in of newly minted Ward 3 councilor Greg Noseworthy.

Noseworthy, a lawyer by trade, unsuccessfully ran for council twice in the last four years, pulling off a victory on his third attempt and replacing Jamie Korab, who left council last summer to enter provincial politics. 

Housing Day forum coming up

Following the swearing-in by Provincial Court of Newfoundland and Labrador Chief Judge Robin Fowler, Mayor Danny Breen made a pair of proclamations. He declared Nov. 20 as National Child Day in the City of St. John’s, and Nov. 22 as National Housing Day.

Meghan Hollett, the city’s affordable housing and development facilitator, spoke about the importance of National Housing Day and the annual forum the city will be hosting on Nov. 29 to mark the occasion. Hollett said the forum will focus on shifting demographics, with a spotlight on immigration and international students.

“The global housing crisis often leads to misplaced blame on vulnerable groups, including immigrants and newcomers with precarious rights,” she said. “As immigration policies become increasingly tied to the conversation around affordable housing, understanding these connections is essential in recent years. Canada, as well as Newfoundland and Labrador, have welcomed more immigrants, while the region faces economic challenges and a shortage of affordable housing.”

This year’s event will feature keynote speaker Dr. Yolande Pottie-Sherman from Memorial University, who will explore the intersection of immigration and housing, and will include a round-table discussion which “will bring together perspectives from folks with lived experience and representatives of both the private and nonprofit sectors.”

Hollett said the forum “aims to foster empathy and dialogue within the St John’s housing community while deepening awareness of the unique challenges faced by immigrants and international students.” By highlighting these perspectives, she said, “we hope to inspire a collaborative approach to addressing housing vulnerabilities.”

Parking relief applications coming more frequently

Getting into development applications, the city allowed an accessory building to be built within the floodplain buffer on Reddy Place and gave parking relief for two applications for secondary units, one on University Avenue and one on Aldershot Street.

Coun. Jill Bruce said it was important to note that in both of the applications walkability and proximity to public transit and trails were factors and she is happy to see more applications like this come before council.

From savoury to cabinet-making

An application to change a non-conforming use for a building on Hamilton Avenue may remove a little spice from the downtown neighbourhood. The application for 180 Hamilton Ave. is to change the use of the building from a mechanical savory packaging facility to instead allow a cabinet-making facility. The building was where Mt. Scio Savoury was packaged in recent years, so who knows what that means for the future of the Newfoundland cooking additive institution. 

Just one submission was received about the application, which the city says is from the applicant and describes the new business, but the version of the application on the city’s website is so heavily redacted that it’s impossible to confirm that.

According to the decision note in the council agenda, the owner/operator will be the sole employee and there are no on-site sales. Parking relief was also requested and approved for the business, which said two parking spaces can be provided inside the building. The building would require three spaces under the city development regulations, but the council allowed both the change of use and the parking relief.

Home-based counseling

An application for a home-based counseling service on Codroy Place in the west end of the city was approved. The application drew two submissions from the public, both of which asked what type of counseling would be performed, and one raised concerns about parking and proximity to schools. The decision note on the agenda said the plan is to provide grief counseling at the site, but points out that the type of counseling offered is not regulated by the city’s development regulations or by a development agreement should the use be approved. 

Greg Noseworthy, who now represents the area on council, said he spoke with a few residents of Codroy Place about the application while on the campaign trail and said they are generally in favour of the application.

“There’s quite a bit of parking there,” he said. “I know a few residents in the past, with home businesses, have expressed concerns but if you look at this particular area there, [it’s] a side street, there’s a park nearby, there’s no issue with parking, there’s tons of free space there — any of that is mitigated by the area.”

Meet you at the Village (housing complex)

A discretionary use application that has spawned a lot of chatter, both online and off, in recent weeks was passed by St. John’s council.

Village Shopping Centre (2006) Inc. made an application to allow for a six-floor, 110-unit apartment building on the north end of its parking lot, with a parking garage on the first floor. 

The city received 29 submissions about the application, which is only the first step in the process; many of the submissions supported the proposal. 

One of the submissions which expressed concerns was from the non-profit Happy City St. John’s. A letter from David Brake on behalf of Happy City’s board asked the city to defer approval “until it and the public can be provided with sufficient documentation to fully understand its implications and provide adequate feedback.” 

“Please note that this request does not imply either approval or disapproval of the project on Happy City’s part,” the letter reads. “Happy City is aware that the proposal is being considered as a discretionary use. We, as would most laypeople, feel that a development of this scale and importance would normally fall under the category of a zoning change.”

Speaking with The Independent a couple of weeks ago, Brake said Happy City believes council and the public don’t know enough about the project to make an informed decision one way or the other. He said if it were treated in the same way as a rezoning, there would be more opportunity for the public to have its voice heard on the proposal.

“This would be an approval in principle, if it was rezoning,” he said. “Approval in principle, followed by taking a look at the more detailed plans, and then they would make a decision. But that’s not the process they’ve chosen to take. The process they chose to take is once they say, ‘go ahead,’ the only way that they would have to change or interfere with the results, is if the results breached the technical guidelines.”

When the application was raised in council, many around the table said they support the project, with Mayor Danny Breen saying he was also supportive of the process the city used to bring the application along.

“Oftentimes we may be criticized or accused of slowing down things because there’s a process to be followed to do that,” Breen said. “But I think this shows that when we have the opportunity to be able to move some projects forward, but still maintaining the integrity of input and engagement, that we can do so. In this case, you have a developer who obviously sees a different use for this property than one that’s traditionally been used for and sees the opportunity if you can replace part of a parking lot in the city with 100 units of housing, then I think he just did something that was good.”

Breen said there will be “a lot of details” that will come out as the project gets through the design stage and he’s confident that this will be a positive redevelopment project for the city.

Coun. Ophelia Ravencroft spoke in favour of the project, pointing out she has been saying for years the largely unused parking lot is a prime area for redevelopment. She said the city is dramatically overbuilt as far as parking capacity goes, citing work done by Myles Russell at Streets are for People, who has spoken out about the number of unused parking spots in the city – and adding the area is ripe for more densified housing.

“We need more housing that’s closely accessible to transit. We need better use of existing vacant space, and we need to deal with the fact that housing is a human right and that we need to be making sure that our decisions and our actions and our investments reflect that,” Ravencroft said.

Road closures, parades and fireworks

With Christmas looming, council had to vote on some road closures associated with the Downtown Christmas Parade scheduled for Nov. 24 (inclement weather date Dec. 1), the Goulds Christmas Parade on Dec. 1 (inclement weather date Dec. 8), and the Holiday Lights at Bowring Park on Dec. 7 (inclement weather date of Dec. 14). 

The Downtown St. John’s Christmas Parade is slated to run from noon-2 p.m., while the Goulds Lions Club Christmas Parade is scheduled for 1-3 p.m., and the Holiday Lights event from 5-6 p.m.

Council also voted to give in-kind support to the George Street Association for its New Year’s Eve event by way of parking enforcement staff to implement the required road closure. In addition to voting on those, council also gave a retroactive firework bylaw exemption go-ahead to The Hindu Temple of St. John’s for its Diwali Celebrations on Nov. 2.

Signs, signs, everywhere there’s signs

Council was asked to give approval for a temporary mobile sign promoting Shoppers Drug Mart’s upcoming flu shot campaign, to be placed on city property in the green space fronting Churchill Square. 

Deputy Mayor Sheilagh O’Leary spoke about the motion, asking staff how many signs can fit on the land in front of Churchill Square, pointing out both her and Coun. Sandy Hickman had raised the issue before, based on feedback from nearby residents. 

Deputy City Manager Jason Synyard said since the land is city-owned, the number of signs placed there is at the discretion of council.

Noseworthy also spoke on the issue, saying he supported the application but feels the city needs to do more enforcement on its sign bylaws.

“I just want to draw attention to what seems to be a bit of an issue now throughout the city. We’ve got a number of signs that are being placed around in improper places; in the middle of roundabouts, being affixed to signage installations near highways,” he said. “I even saw Christmas at the Glacier signs throughout the city of St John’s. 

“I think it’s getting to a point now where we need to start looking at enforcement of our sign bylaws a little bit more, because it’s going to get to a point where people are going to be getting in an accident over some of these inadvertently-placed signs.”

Breen said if anyone sees a sign they feel is improperly placed, they should call 311.