Are There Too Many Townhomes Being Proposed for this Part of Mississauga?
Published March 6, 2019 at 4:34 am
A Mississauga neighbourhood could soon be seeing massive changes if a series of new townhouses gets approved by city council.
According to this city staff report, there is a development application made to request permission to build 112 back to back stacked townhomes in a residential neighbourhood in the area of Dundas Street and Confederation Parkway.
If completed as per specifications, the stacked townhomes are supposed to look like this:
Based on the layout and the location of this proposed development in a narrow residential street, there were some concerns from residents in a number of areas, which was brought up during the city’s planning meeting on March 4.
A woman named Barbara Frank said this neighbourhood was outside the intensification targets of the Dundas Connects project and that the 1.5 parking space per unit designation was based on obsolete data from 2009.
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She also mentioned how there could be 100 school children moving in with the new development and that there’s no room for school buses. “We can’t even see the street around the bike lane because congestion is blocking visibility; there’s insufficient access to parking whether it’s above ground or below ground,” Frank said.
“It’s like stuffing a huge foot into a teeny weeny little shoe. There’s a lot of real estate around that would be more suitable for this kind of property. Squeezing people into this development does not allow for a comfortable lifestyle.”
Another gentleman said he understood the need for council to build more affordable housing but said Argyle was not like Bloor Street, Yonge and Finch or Wellesley or “a place where you can build a beju.” “This is really one residential road: Argyle and Dunbar,” he said, and his entire point was mainly about parking, and that putting more people in is only going to exacerbate the problem.
Other people said that there would be problems with overcrowding in the nearby Mississauga Hospital, and many others expressed similar concerns over loss of quality of life, public safety and even nature, with one woman saying that there will be less birds chirping at 5 am when more trees are cut down. Another woman brought up how the area has suffered power outages and worried how accommodating more residents would affect power usage in the future.
Overall, residents spoke of their desire to maintain the quality of life in the area and did not feel that many townhomes would actually fit the area to the point where it didn’t risk public safety in terms of traffic activity.
A big criticism is that city planners, staff and developers are only looking analyzing data points and “squares on a map” in making their decisions without actually thinking of how this affects the realities of people’s everyday lives.
It should be noted that no final decision has been made and this proposed development of 112 stacked townhouse units is just that right now. The local councillor, Dipika Damerla, also objected due to 70 townhomes per acre being outside the norm of 40-60 per acre.
Damerla said she was not comfortable supporting the development application as is, and was open for residents to have another evening planning session to discuss this development further.
What do you think of these stacked townhomes potentially coming to Argyle and Dunbar Road in Mississauga?
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