There’s strong support on city council to turn municipally-owned lands into affordable housing projects, but many members expressed an uneasiness about using parkland to do it.
Rather than jump on the first opportunities presented – an initial staff analysis identified portions of Sleeman and Hugh C. Guthrie parks that could be relatively quickly converted to residential use – a majority of council wants to wait until all city-owned properties have been reviewed.
A motion to defer discussion about issuing a call for proposals to build on those parklands passed in a 10-3 vote during Wednesday’s committee of the whole meeting.
Council will consider ratifying the deferral during its meeting on July 23.
“Expediency should never be the substitute for informed decision-making,” commented Coun. Leanne Caron, who put forward the deferral. “We are failing at leadership and stewardship if we make a quick decision without full information.”
“I don’t think we’re looking at this issue holistically,” added Coun. Christine Billings. “It would give me more comfort if we had that city-wide inventory.”
That full inventory, along with staff analysis, is expected to be done by the end of this year, with a report to council anticipated in January, 2025. Wednesday’s deferral, if ratified by council, would align discussion about issuing a call for proposals with receipt of that full report.
In the meantime, council is also expected to receive a draft housing affordability strategy from staff.
Coun. Linda Busuttil, who is opposed to the loss of parkland, referred to the identified sites as "long-hanging fruit"
Voting against the deferral were councillors Dan Gibson and Ken Yee Chew, as well as Mayor Cam Guthrie.
“I don’t think we need to be fearful to look at these opportunities,” said Chew, who praised “the merit” behind the idea.
It was Guthrie’s mayoral order, made in late February, which resulted in the staff report. That order called for staff to identify city-owned property that could be used for housing and report to council no later than the end of June.
“To build quickly and affordably, unprogrammed park spaces are the best candidate sites to meet this direction,” the report explains.
Surface parking lots often have infrastructure that would require moving or historic contamination that requires study, making them a longer-term solution, noted James Goodram, the city’s general manager of economic development and tourism.
The mayor’s order required sites to be identified where quick action is possible.
The two named properties are Hugh C. Guthrie Park on Edinburgh Road, in the Old University neighbourhood, and Sleeman Park on Silvercreek Parkway, in the Onward Willow neighbourhood.
Hugh C. Guthrie Park fits the bill since there is capacity to accommodate a medium-density development. As for the park the play structure and baseball diamond will still be there. Some of the park space and tree loss will be impacted by residential development. The city could use 4.5 acres of the park for the development, meaning there will be just over one acre loss of parkland.
Sleeman Park can accommodate a higher-density development than Hugh Guthrie Park, but it means the baseball diamond would be removed and there would be parkland loss.
“We’re told by the province, we’re told by the housing symposium and we’re told by the development industry that the barrier to building more housing is red tape, infrastructure, labour, materials and high interest rates. Never has it been about lack of land,” Caron said, noting there are about 6,000 housing units approved, waiting on developers to build them.
“Parkland, in my mind, doesn’t belong to the corporation as a real estate holding. It belongs to the people of Guelph.”
Ahead of council’s discussion, it heard from several delegates who urged it to leave parkland alone.
“When a park’s gone, it’s gone,” said Werner Zimmermann. “You give it away and it won’t come back.”
“Please do not take action, leave our parks alone,” added Debra Newcombie.
In a 2022 report from city staff, council learned the city is hard-pressed to grow its parkland by the estimated 174 hectares needed by 2051 to accommodate the city’s growing population.
The city has about 400 hectares (988 acres) of parkland, which includes city parks of various sizes, school properties, conservation areas, the University of Guelph and arboretum lands, open spaces, stormwater management ponds and trails, as well as natural heritage and river systems.
Other delegates to the committee of the whole, such as Elena Harte of the Central Ontario Co-operative Housing Federation and Ryan Deska of Habitat for Humanity Guelph Wellington, encouraged council to move forward with the idea.
“The need has never been greater,” said Deska, who said the City of Kitchener recently provided land for a Habitat for Humanity project there.
“We are simply encouraging the City to continue this work at an urgent pace that matches the crisis we see unfolding at our doors,” adds a joint letter from Tom Armitage, manager of The SEED, Hope House executive director Jaya James and Sarah Muener, executive director for Chalmers Community Services Centre.
As noted in a letter from president and CEO Shakiba Shayani, Guelph Chamber of Commerce supports the idea and encourages council to move ahead with seeking expressions of interest.
At the onset of Wednesday’s meeting, during a 40-minute long close-door session, council met to discuss unsolicited letters of intent to acquire municipal property. However, there’s no publicly available information about who the letters are from or what they propose.
“We did receive information from staff and we also gave direction to staff,” Guthrie said after, providing a brief public update about that closed-door matter.
