Appeals Dropped

Wednesday, 16 October 2013 12:14

Homestead's conversion of the Harvey Woods building has the green light after objectors drop their appeals

It fizzled out before it began.

Deals were reached this morning with the last two objectors on the city's zone change to convert the old Harvey Woods building into affordable housing apartments.

Mike Costa was appealing because he didn't think it was fair that Homestead Christian Care is being subsidized to rent out units.

But Costa dropped the appeal, after meeting with Homestead face to face, and learning who they are building the units for. "It's to look after those who are the least fortunate, or less desirable to rent to by most. So I reached an agreement today that they said that's what the impetus would be. The driving force is to rent to those people."

Homestead Project Developer Graham Cubitt tells Heart FM, "We're committed to serving people with a disability. Typically our tenants are living with a low income due to that disability. ODSP, the Ontario Disability Support Program is our tenants typical source of income and we just made that clear in our conversations this morning."

Costa also asked for the top 10-feet of the old smoke stack be taken down because it's leaning. "On the structural stack, which they want to leave for heritage. As a licensed carpenter, even though they have an engineers report, I recommend the last 10-feet be taken down because it's leading out of plumb, even though it's tapered, for their own safety."

Project Developer Graham Cubitt says two other appeals filed by city lawyers, Trent Zimmerman and Peter Kratzmann, who have offices on Van Ave., had their concerns addressed as well. "The site specifics. Fencing, parking, the site layout and when we filed our site plan, all those details became clear and public and it seemed to resolve those issues."

Construction will be ongoing this year to get 54 affordable housing units ready for October 2014. A phase 2 of the project would bring the building up to 80 units.