We would love to hear from you!
Official Plan Amendment & Rezoning Resubmission
We are pleased to confirm that we made our Official Plan Amendment and Rezoning resubmission (second submission) to Town Planning on October 27, 2021. All submitted application materials are available for download here and are available on the Town of Grimsby’s Current Planning Applications webpage. Town Staff hosted the statutory Public Meeting on December 16, 2021.
Official Plan Amendment & Rezoning Submission
We are pleased to confirm that we made our Official Plan Amendment and Rezoning submission to Town Planning on May 31, 2021. All submitted application materials are available for download here and are available on the Town of Grimsby’s Current Planning Applications webpage in the near future. We anticipate receiving feedback from the Town and other commenting agencies in early fall 2021.
*This rendering is for illustrative purposes only and the design is subject to further revision through the iterative design process.
Preliminary Project Concept Design
Our team met with Town of Grimsby and Niagara Region Staff for a pre-consultation meeting on February 18, 2021 to review the technical requirement for our future Official Plan Amendment and rezoning application. We have added some additional information for clarity to the presentation and recorded it as the video below for your review. The narrators on the video are Harley Valentine of Castlepoint Numa, Emma West of Bousfields (our planner), and Drew Sinclair of SvN Architects (our lead architect). It is also available as a PDF for your download and review below.
Thank you for your participation!
*Please note that any inappropriate comments - for example, using profanity or derogatory language - are not acceptable.
Community Feedback on Project Objectives
We would like to send a big thank you to everyone who participated in our survey on the proposed project objectives, which was online from February, 2021 – March, 2021! The survey was an opportunity to share your thoughts on our proposed key objectives, hear about your priorities for The Woolverton project, and gather any other feedback you wanted to share with us.
We are using your feedback to inform our proposed concept design including the massing. Interestingly, from the eight project objectives to chose from, almost everyone chose the same one of two objectives as their first choice:
Two thirds of respondents chose “ensuring high quality architecture and design excellence” as their top objective;
Almost one third of respondents chose “ensuring the adaptive reuse of historic buildings” as their top objective; and
The one outlier was the respondent who chose “incorporating a vibrant and inviting public realm that provides opportunity for public gathering” as their top objective!
Overall, the final ranking of the objectives is as follows:
1. Ensuring high quality architecture and design excellence
2. Ensuring the adaptive reuse of historic buildings
3. Incorporating a vibrant and inviting public realm that provides opportunity for public gathering
4. Respecting the view corridor to the Escarpment
5. Introducing a variety of uses on site including community, commercial, residential, and retail uses
6. Providing a diversity in housing, including rental housing
7. Providing publicly accessible community spaces including commercial/office space and open space (such as a plaza)
8. Supporting downtown pedestrian connections across and around the site
Community members also suggested including the following additional objectives:
Ensuring that community stakeholders, including nearby residents, are engaged throughout the process; and
Considering the amenity needs of users in different stages of life including young families and seniors.
Your feedback is extremely helpful for us. We will review our proposed concept and every subsequent design iteration against these objectives, including the two additional objectives suggested, to ensure we are in keeping with them.
We also heard that folks were pleased with our community outreach approach! We can confirm that we will continue to outreach through our digital platform, our community liaison, and through emails to the folks on our stakeholders communications list. We also hope to host an in person session in the near future. To add your name to the stakeholders communications list or to provide any feedback or ask questions, please send us an email at grimsby@castlepointnuma.com!
This webpage includes all the comments and questions received to date and our team’s responses and status of how and when those comments will be addressed in the below matrix. It will be updated on a regular basis.
You are welcome to email us at any time at grimsby@castlepointnuma.com.
*Please note that any inappropriate comments - for example, using profanity or derogatory language - are not acceptable nor will be included in the matrix.
Community
Date comment/feedback received: February 18, 2021
Status of comment/feedback: Resolved
Q: Is Castlepoint engaged in other development projects in Grimsby?
A: At this time, this is the only project in Grimsby that Castlepoint is working on.
Date comment/feedback received: February 21, 2021
Status of comment/feedback: Ongoing
Q: When will you have an in-person meeting?
A: Our team has been monitoring the evolving public health guidelines and will organize an in-person Public Open House when it is safe to do so. Currently, the Town of Grimsby is only proceeding with virtual meetings. We participated in a virtual meeting to review our application on September 13, 2021 followed by a virtual meeting with the Grimsby Heritage Committee on September 14, 2021 and November 23, 2021. The Town hosted a virtual Statutory Public Meeting on December 16, 2021.
Design
Date comment/feedback received: February 21, 2021
Status of comment/feedback: Resolved
Q: Given the situation currently in communal living for seniors there needs to be better co-housing opportunities with community support for this population cohort. Has your proposal taken the needs of aging seniors with co-housing opportunities into consideration?
A: We hope that the building will support people in different stages of their lives and with different mobility needs. We will be working through the design details at the Site Plan Application phase of the redevelopment, which will follow the phase of design development that we are currently in (the Rezoning and Official Plan Amendment phase) which focuses on land use, height and general massing. That said, this will not be a co-housing development which has different requirements and set of criteria. There are several co-housing groups in Ontario and across Canada. We encourage you to visit www.cohousing.ca.
Date comment/feedback received: February 24, 2021
Status of comment/feedback: Ongoing
Q: Will public art be incorporated on site?
A: We too are advocates for public art and the arts community. Among other initiatives, we recently completed the adaptive reuse of the 10 storey heritage building at 158 Sterling Road in Toronto. We grounded the building with arts and culture. Our tenants include the Museum of Contemporary Art, Toronto Biennial of Art, the Akin Studio Program, which provides space for twenty artist studios, and other creative businesses in the tech and design industries. Currently, our project is at the OPA and Rezoning stage (which is focused on built form massing and height), but when we get to the Site Plan application stage we will delve into the design details including opportunities for the incorporation of public art. We would be delighted to engage in conversation with you and other community members on public art at that time.