Zoning Issue 2005
updated February 24, 2006

Supporting Information

Business Opportunity Plan

Feb 2005 city planners have created a proposal to re-zone our downtown residential area.

City staff have created a plan that would see a zoning change to the residential area of most of the core housing stock.

This plan has been titled the Central Neighbourhoods Home Business Opportunity Program.

This program has been labeled an opportunity but an opportunity for whom?

The city lists benefits to the program as a competitive advantage when selling, improved neighbourhood safety and the creation of live-work space for entrepreneurs and artisans.

Not one of those benefits applies to the current residents invested in living in city's core.

The competitive advantage in selling homes in the core and potential increased selling prices are only a benefit to those people who want to leave the downtown, not those who have already invested, nor those who wish to move to the downtown. Real-estate agents would benefit from the increased prices and potential for greater turn over.

Improved neighbourhood safety is also misdirected. For years Kitchener Police Services have worked with our neighbourhoods and the Neighbourhood Watch program telling us that we know the neighbourhood, who and what is in place and what is out of place and suspect. How does increased traffic, more people coming and going and a workforce busy earning a living improve our awareness of what is happening in our community.

The city planner also claims that increased traffic will occur while we are away at work. Our retired neighbours, our stay at home parents, and our children do not leave to go to work.

Changing our residential neighbourhoods into business districts so that we have more day time activity is not a benefit to our communities.

To achieve sustainability cities across Canada are fighting to have more people in the downtown after business hours. To increase the number of people living in the core. Opening each home to the potential decrease in 50% of the living space does not increase the number of people living in the core. The Regional Plan and the City's strategic investments have been to increase the number of families living in the core.  This plan does not.

With new businesses moving downtown and the coming universities with their need for staff and student housing there are growing demands on housing in the core, housing which has traditionally had a very low vacancy rate. How does zoning these residential areas for business help support these needs?

Entrepreneurs and artisans currently thrive in our neighbourhoods, as is permitted by the zoning which applies to the whole city. To quote planner Bluhm, "Our history at city hall is that we've had very few complaints about home businesses, so by nature they haven't been problematic for us in the past,"  This is absolutely true with the existing zoning.  Why fix what is not broken?  Who is benefiting? How many times a week are people approaching city council applying for variances that require the types of changes proposed in this plan? If there are not a lot of people asking, who is it that wants these changes? Who is benefiting?

Is it true, as it appears in the Record, that this began because the Kitchener Downtown Community Collaborative asked real-estate agents what they could do to increase the value of their homes? And that these zoning changes would result in higher selling prices.  For those investing in community and with a desire to live in the city's core with all of its opportunities and benefits, selling out and moving out of the core are not benefits.

For a city and region aiming to ensure a sustainable core, higher prices, higher turn over, and fewer families are not a benefit.

Besides real-estate agents and those hoping to sell at higher prices and leave the community, who benefits from this proposal? 

David Bradshaw
ANA 2005

For more information or to participate in the program email zoning@myneighbour.org or call Dave Bradshaw at 578-4586.

Thank you.

For support of ANA we thank

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