Guelph councillors will soon be hearing a proposal to bring hundreds of townhouse and apartment units to the west end of the city.
According to a notice posted on the City of Guelph’s website, the Armel Corporation is looking to build as many as 800 dwelling units — a mix of townhouses and apartments — and a neighbourhood park on a seven-hectare plot of land on the southwest corner of Paisley and Whitelaw roads.
The vast majority of the units would come from apartments, with 620 units across five buildings on site, according to the urban design brief done by GSP Group on behalf of Armel for this application. The brief adds that two of the apartment buildings, standing 10 storeys tall, would line Paisley. The other three, standing eight storeys tall, would line Whitelaw.
The remaining units, 164 stacked townhouse units within 14 buildings, would be towards the middle of the property.
As for parking, the concept calls for 620 parking spaces for the apartments, mostly underground, and 182 spaces for the townhouses. The urban design brief notes the number of parking spaces for the apartments “is conceptual and dependent on the ultimate form and layout of the parking garage.”
The western portion of the development would hug the city’s border with Guelph-Eramosa, with a woodlot on the other side of the boundary line.
However, while it owns the property and is putting the application forward, the brief adds Armel “is not expecting to be the project’s end-builder.”
Along with the residential component of the property, Armel is looking to dedicate 1.2 hectares of the property to the city for a public park.
The urban design brief notes Armel is also looking to dedicate some of the land from the abutting property in Guelph-Eramosa, which it also owns, to the City of Guelph “for the purposes of larger park consolidation.” However, that issue is not part of the development application that would be coming before city hall.
With the development being proposed for an empty lot, next to a wooded area, there are also some concerns when it comes to the area’s natural surroundings.
According to an environmental impact study conducted by Natural Resource Solutions as part of the application, the deciduous woodland and swamp adjacent to the property are identified as core greenlands by Wellington County’s greenlands system.
The report notes there were 18 “locally significant species” observed within the study area, with the majority seen in the neighbouring woodland. There is, however, one plant rare to Wellington County found on the property — hairy aster was found on the north side of the property.
As a result of these findings, the report recommends a buffer be built around the woodland southwest of the property.
Armel already owns several commercial plazas in the area, including the West Hills Town Centre at Paisley and Eramosa, and the West End and Paisley plazas, both at Paisley and Imperial.
A public meeting for this application at city hall has not yet been announced. The next planning meeting for city council, when such an application would be heard, is scheduled for Nov. 19.