The Ontario Land Tribunal recently ruled in favour of Losani Homes over the City of Hamilton, allowing the developer to build a residential community at 1400 South Service Road in Winona on what was previously designated as business park lands.
The development area is near the South Service Road and Fifty Road intersection, with the Winona Crossing shopping plaza less than one kilometre away.
The entrance to the residential development, which will also include two commercial buildings and a three-storey office building, will be through South Service Road.
The land in question borders the South Service Road to the north and the railway line to the south.
Entering from the South Service Road, renderings show two commercial buildings followed by the three-storey office building.
Further back, closer to the rail line, will be two eight-storey residential apartment buildings with 229 units each.
The very back of the development will have two 16-storey residential apartment buildings with 265 units each and will be connected to each other by a bridge.
While previous documents also show plans for townhouses at the site, those appear to have been scrapped and replaced with surface-level parking.
It should also be noted that while the Ontario Land Tribunal approved the original plan for 986 residential units, a revised Concept Plan was also submitted in which Losani Homes reduced the number of residential units to 840.
Thus, it is unclear at this time what the final number of units will be.
The development plan was appealed to the Ontario Land Tribunal on Nov. 8, 2023, after the city failed to make a decision on the application within the time frame requirements outlined in the Planning Act.
Losani Homes was requesting that the land, which was designated as business park lands, also be permitted for residential.
Legislative changes from the provincial government, specifically the 2024 Provincial Planning Statement, no longer require municipal comprehensive reviews to remove lands from Employment Areas to permit non-employment uses.
The change is meant to quicken residential development in the midst of Canada’s housing crisis.
Based on an analysis of definitions, the Tribunal found that the Subject Site “is neither an Area of Employment nor an Employment Area and as such is available for redevelopment.”
The main reasoning for the decision is that the site is a stand-alone space that is not clustered with other business lands.
Indeed, a City of Hamilton staff report from Nov. 4, 2024, reads, “Areas that continue to permit uses that are now excluded under the Planning Act definition like stand-alone office, retail, commercial and institutional uses, will no longer be considered as Area of Employment under the Planning Act., and therefore not protected from appeals from decisions related to requests for conversion to nonemployment uses.”
The Tribunal concluded, “The Tribunal finds the application proposes to maintain an employment function through the proposed split designation in the Official Plan Amendment and Zoning By-law Amendment on the Subject Site, which will permit non-residential uses, including offices, which could generate 524 jobs on the subject site. This helps further the provincial goal of intensification for development of new homes while maintaining employment opportunities in the city.”
Based in Hamilton, he reaches hundreds of thousands of people monthly on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter. He has been published in The Hamilton Spectator, Stoney Creek News, and Bay Observer. He has also been a segment host with Cable 14 Hamilton. In 2017, he received the Chancellor Full Tuition Scholarship from the University of Ottawa (BA, 2022). He has also received the Governor General’s Academic Medal. He formerly worked in a non-partisan role on Parliament Hill in Ottawa.
