Burlington Council Approves Two Plains Road Buildings and Refuses a Third

Plains Road East is going to change, and the shape of that change is now mostly settled. Burlington city council passed zoning and official plan amendments for two of three proposed developments along the road, and refused the third outright.

The larger of the approved pair is a 12-storey mixed-use building at 517 Plains Rd. E., with 179 rental residential units, eight ground-floor commercial units and 105 parking spaces. The second is a nine-storey mixed-use building at 235 Plains Rd. E. and 1022 Gallagher Rd., carrying 140 residential units with non-residential space at street level. Both include a mechanical penthouse and rooftop amenity space.

Council refused the amendments for the third proposal, a 25-storey mixed-use building with 283 residential units at 1376 and 1382 Plains Rd. E. The city's official notice gave two reasons: an intensity and scale beyond what is considered appropriate for the site given where it sits, and a built form that does not transition properly to the areas beside it.

Approval is not the final step for the two that passed. Both still have to clear a site plan review before anyone issues a building permit.

None of the three decisions is locked in yet either. Official notices went out on October 8, following the September 29 council meeting, and the deadline to appeal any of them to the Ontario Land Tribunal is Wednesday, October 28.