Contentious plan for eight-story condo in Upper Stoney Creek heads straight to appeal tribunal

City staff had been scheduled to present a report recommending denial of the related rezoning applications at the Jan. 16 planning committee, which was also to include a required public meeting.

“The planning process is very dynamic and is subject to many technical and complex variables,” Ariens said in an email response to a request for comment on Mikmada’s change of heart on an appeal.

“Based on our experience, a project that does not have staff or public support would not likely be approved by council and would result in an inevitable (tribunal) hearing regardless.”

Mikmada’s original 299-unit housing plan for the 1065 Paramount Dr. lot drew heated opposition from more than 250 residents, who packed a neighbourhood meeting last February. It included the eight-storey, 197-unit condo building and 102 stacked townhouses on the 1.6-hectare site.

But a revised plan presented at a followup June meeting didn’t go over any better. To reduce the condo building’s massing, the plan now had it starting at three storeys on Paramount Drive and rising to eight storeys in stages, cutting the number of units to 181.

In return, the new plan added more stacked townhouses, bumping their number to 123. It also boosted parking spaces to 441 from an original 319 — achieved by adding garages to 19 townhouse units and increasing underground spots.

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• Dec 31, 1969
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• Dec 31, 1969
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Mikmada submitted the initial zoning applications in November 2022 and Ariens said at the June meeting his client could have appealed the city’s nondecision within a prescribed 120 days to the land tribunal, but had no intention of doing so.

“We want to have a made-in-Hamilton solution. We want to have a made-in-Hamilton development,” Ariens said at the time.

Coun. Brad Clark, who represents the area, said he opposes the development and is disappointed by the appeal for a nondecision, which “cuts the public out of the process” by not first holding a statutory public meeting.

At his behest, the planning committee will instead now hold a nonstatutory public meeting at their Feb. 6 meeting to hear residents’ concerns. The input will help councillors determine their direction to staff on the appeal, he said.

Clark said the development’s height and density are too much for the area, which already has traffic issues that the city tried to address by reconstructing Paramount Drive as a boulevard to slow motorists.

He said he’s supported small apartment buildings on major thoroughfares like Rymal Road, but Paramount Drive is a collector road serving a neighbourhood with two schools and where a three-storey seniors residence is the tallest building.

“From the beginning, an eight-storey tower was just something that was inflaming the community; they were so upset,” Clark said, noting more than 4,000 people have signed petitions against the plan, the most he’s ever seen for a development in his ward.

“The residents were not objecting to townhouses or stacked townhouses, they were objecting to the height of the (condo) building; that was their objection and I think it was a reasonable objection.”