A hotel and two restaurants may be coming to the area of 524 York Rd., Niagara-on-the-Lake council heard last Tuesday. But a bylaw, an objection from the airport and rules surrounding the two are likely to keep this project in limbo for a little while.
The new development is being proposed as an extension of the current Staybridge Suites and Holiday Inn hotels, which are owned by the same person who is proposing this project.
The hotel and restaurant complex would also have a 247-car parking lot, 11 biking spaces, and 11,373 square metres of area occupied. It would be bordered by Glendale Avenue on the east, Queenston Road on the south, York Road on the north and Counsell Street on the west.
The site is distinguished by its proximity to the Queen Elizabeth Highway and by the diversity of what surrounds it.
“The surrounding lands include conservation, residential, commercial, industrial and institutional uses,” said John Federici, senior planner at Niagara-on-the-Lake.
The restaurants would have outdoor areas outside that would be well-developed outdoor patio-type construction around the Cousell Street side.
Registered planner David Falletta, whose employer, Bousfields, is working with the owner on this site, sees this addition as making the hotel and restaurants a nice area to walk around and sit outside.
“Where Counsell Street bends, there’s a great opportunity,” said Falletta at last week’s planning committee of the whole. “We want to create a really walkable, interconnected site.”
Federici said during the meeting that while there weren’t objections from most parties to the hotel and restaurants, there was one exception.
The Niagara District Airport is not happy with the proposed height of the hotel: 10 storeys, which, in this case, would be approximately 33 metres.
The airport argues that the hotel at this height, in this place, violates federal airline zoning regulations, particularly one that prohibits building higher than 140 metres above sea level around the airport.
Dan Pilon, CEO of the Niagara District Airport, explained to The Lake Report the impact of having tall buildings in the area of the airport for pilots flying through this part of the Niagara peninsula.
The airport sits on land lower than the parts of Niagara-on-the-Lake close by, which are higher up on the escarpment.
“When you fly over the tip of the escarpment, you lose all that space,” Pilon said. “140 metres above sea level is the federal zoning regulations max.”
The proposed hotel and restaurant are roughly four kilometres southeast of the airport, and would fall into the area where building would be restricted.
The architectural plans for the hotel indicate its finished floor level would be 116.5 metres.
Pilon said the way to look at the zoning regulations would be to have a plan for a large amount of development within the airport’s area over a long period of time.
This would allow them to analyze the impact of the development all at once, rather than one project at a time.
“We don’t want to look at this on a building-by-building approach because we believe that will be long and expensive,” said Pilon. “If we want to open the zoning regulations, we should do it once.”
Falletta said they are looking for an exemption to the regulation that keeps buildings below 140 metres.
In this case, building to the height that Bousfield’s client wants would require an exemption from the town’s airport zoning regulations, which Falletta said would not be easy, showing that this development is not likely to be completed for some time.
“It’s a very difficult process in some circumstances,” said Falletta. “It takes a little bit of time.”
Federici said that no comments from the public have been submitted either for or against the proposed development.
The next step for Bousfields is to submit their application for the hotel and restaurants to be reviewed and potentially approved. It is not clear yet when that will happen.
