Planned Tecumseh hamlet
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At first look, the hamlet planned for the northeast of Tecumseh looks like the ideal modern community.
Destined to house 8,800 people in 4,300 residential units, the hamlet – situated between Banwell Road, County Road 22, County Road 42 and the City of Windsor – is designed to make life comfortable for future residents.
It’s a rarity to outline an entire hamlet, an entire lifestyle, in one planning document. When the residences are built and occupied, Tecumseh’s population will increase by almost 40 per cent.
A park with specially situated active and passive spaces, interconnected walking and cycling trails, two-way bike lanes shielded from vehicles, residential blocks that are not too long to encourage walking, leaving most amenities reachable by bicycle or on foot, are all part of the Tecumseh Hamlet Plan.
There’s a new elementary school, and the extension of Shields Street, which is destined to be a major road through the hamlet, will include grass-and-treed medians between driving lanes to slow down traffic and provide safety for pedestrians. There will be areas of grand sidewalks, larger than normal, that are protected from the street with another landscaped barrier. Built-in traffic calming, such as raised pedestrian crossings are intended to make the street more walking friendly.
Maisonneuve Street, currently a quiet residential street, will extend into the hamlet as a main street with residential and commercial properties easily accessible from anywhere in the development.
A provincially significant woodlot will be protected. About 40 per cent of the land will be open space.
Tecumseh is getting a $15.1 million grant from the Ontario Housing Enabling Systems Fund to help install water and sewage trunk lines to make the development possible.
The hamlet, to be built on farmland between existing development and Banwell Road, immediately across from the NextStar Energy battery plant, will consist of high-, low- and medium-density residential units to help address the nationwide housing crisis.
It will be “a completely walkable, sustainable and vibrant community,” Dorsa Jalalian, associate senior urban designer at DIALOG, the urban design firm working with Tecumseh on planning the project, told Tecumseh councillors at a meeting Aug. 13. The mixed residential approach “provides opportunities for all to live in the hamlet,” she said.
“It’s a self-contained-type development,” mayor Gary McNamara said. “It’s all about walkability. Park your car, you’ll be able to service a lot of your needs by walking or cycling.”
Commercial plazas are strategically placed with ease of access in mind and the plan is to expand the transit system to serve the hamlet, especially along the higher density development along Banwell Road.
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The town worked with landowners who will develop the hamlet on its design, and consulted with school boards, the Essex Region Conservation Authority, Essex County, First Nations, the City of Windsor and school boards on planning the development. Pubic consultations provided more input.
Normal planning practice 10 years ago would likely have seen this hamlet developed entirely as low density, Brian Hillman, director of development services, told councillors.
“There’s a real transformation that’s happening in our communities around housing types and options that need to be available for future residents,” he said.
Most of the higher density parts of the development are situated closer to Banwell Road to provide some distance from the existing subdivision.
Drawings accompanying the presentation by Jalalian show residents frolicking in open space or on a soccer pitch, and a scenic waterway designed to handle drainage.
It’s a planned community, the likes of which this part of Ontario hasn’t seen since Forest Glade in Windsor.
It’s Tecumseh’s Hilldale, the idyllic planned neighbourhood in Back to the Future.
Councillors at the Aug. 13 meeting, expressed their general satisfaction with the plan.
“I like what I see and I think this would be a really good plan and a great development,” said Ward 11 Coun. Brian Houston, who lives on Corbi Lane which backs onto the land to be developed. He expressed concerns about traffic congestion, but hoped that upgrades to Banwell Road, and Country Roads 42 and 43 will address that.
McNamara said residences in the new hamlet will be in high demand.
“The biggest challenge is going to be once they start building this, people are going to want to come,” he said. “They’re going to want to come into this, this area because it offers a lot of opportunities.”
But it’s up to the Town of Tecumseh to marry the new with the old, and that has its challenges.
Residents who live near the planned hamlet have voiced a number of concerns, including the effects on property values, years of noisy and dusty construction, traffic congestion, and sightlines from proposed multi-storey apartments into the backyards of the majestic houses on Corbi Lane.
At a Sept. 24 public meeting residents voiced their arguments against changes.
The Tecumseh Hamlet Secondary Plan identifies a current neighbourhood of seven houses surrounded by farmland on the corner of Intersection and Banwell roads as medium-density residential. The existing houses in that plan are gone.
Those homeowners had some things to say about that at the public meeting.
“You can imagine how we were all floored when we first saw the plan and we saw that one dark area of orange … right where our houses are,” resident David Pedro told councillors. Orange represents medium-density residential on the hamlet plan.
“We’re looking at a plan that doesn’t include our homes in any kind of way.”
Georgeo Ahad, also a resident of the neighbourhood, said he had an image of a six-storey building where his house now sits.
“There are many words I would use to describe how I feel but the ones that stand out the most are betrayed and abandoned,” he said.
“Why is our town not including us in this plan but rather excluding us out of it.”
Hillman explained that typically, when these kinds of major developments are built around existing small neighbourhoods, residents sell their properties for development and the neighbourhood disappears, though he said that could take quite some time.
The hamlet plan was made with that in mind, he said.
Monathan Michienzi, who lives on Corbi Lane, said part of his street will be too close to medium-density housing. A local real estate agent said residents would lose tens of thousands of dollars from property values as a result.
Michienzi and others asked to push the medium-density housing farther back from Corbi Lane, to make the development less intrusive.
Hillman later explained that under existing planning practices new developments don’t typically take into account property values on existing neighhbourhoods because many factors affect the value of homes. Compatibility is a key consideration, he said.
Then there was Hal Kersey, of HRK Realty Services, who appeared on behalf of two sets of developers who own two parcels of land in the area.
Kersey said his clients want more high-density development. Housing is now more expensive to buy and build, he said. While his clients generally support the hamlet plan, “new housing must be constructed at higher densities to keep costs down to meet market demand,” he said.
Some residents interviewed on Corbi Lane expressed concern with responses from the town.
A common complaint was the noise, with which many are familiar following construction of the NextStar battery plant across Banwell Road.
For Jeff Jurakosky, intrusive sightlines from the multi-storey apartments, traffic and noisy construction are concerns.
“We’re actually looking to move out before all that happens specifically because I don’t want to deal with the noise, the dirt and dust, and so much traffic,” said Jurakosky, who has lived in the area for 25 years.
“It’s going to be a nightmare for 10 years.”
For Allen Hernandez, who also lives on Corbi Lane, his major concern is the possibility that multi-storey buildings nearest to his house will provide intrusive sightlines on his property. He wants the mixed-density housing moved farther away from Corbi Lane. “I’d planned on retiring here. Now maybe the plans have changed,” he said.
Jalalian said a study on sightlines shows they won’t be intrusive into existing housing, but in an interview with the Windsor Star last week McNamara indicated there was a possibility of considering a “tweak” to the development to move mixed-density housing father from Corbi Lane and closer to Banwell Road.
And as for the inconvenience during development, that was likely the case for existing residents when Corbi Lane was built, McNamara said.
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The development is planned in three phases – north of the CP railroad tracks to County Road 22, south of the tracks to County Road 42 and a smaller parcel of land south of the tracks adjacent to Manning Road.
Town planners are preparing a report that considers all the public input, with suggested responses, which is expected to be presented in November.