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Saint John unveiled the final draft of its long-term plan to bring more housing, business and recreation possibilities to one of the oldest parts of the city.
City staff presented the north end neighbourhood plan to Saint John’s planning advisory committee, which gave the 25-year growth strategy the green light at a Tuesday night meeting.
The plan splits the north into seven zones, including Douglas and Lansdowne avenues, Main Street, and the Crescent Valley area.
Staff approached the plan, which has been in the works since 2004, with key points of focus, senior planner Sam Burns said.
“Staff looked for growth opportunities and housing … while also prioritizing and increasing the city’s tax base. Additionally, the planning process looked to focus on opportunities for beautification and revitalization, building upon and improving green space and amenities.”
The north end has long been one of the more impoverished areas of Saint John. In 2021, Human Development Council data said the ward’s median after tax household income was below the municipal, provincial and national averages.
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It’s also known for several vacant lots and buildings. The lots are specifically being targeted for mixed-income housing development.
The city held a number of open houses, including some last summer and some within the last month. The city hired a planning consulting firm — Fotenn Consulting — to help with policy and community engagement sessions.
Mixed-income housing a key feature
While the plan’s scope is broad, one of its biggest priorities is housing. According to the staff report submitted to the committee, the land the city identified as “vacant or underutilized” have the capacity for 6000 to 11,800 housing units.
To accommodate this scale of potential housing development, the plan includes a municipal plan change where north end areas currently designated as “Stable Area Residential” will be “evolved” to a range of low, medium and high density and mixed-residential areas.
This is to bring it in line with residential zoning reforms introduced last year.
The change would allow multi-unit housing forms of roughly 35 to as many as 60 units per net hectare with buildings as tall as six storeys. Building sizes would depend on area designation.
To accommodate the development, the city is looking to change areas designated as ‘Stable Area Residential’ to low to medium density areas (light orange), medium to high density areas (dark orange), and mixed-use areas (purple). (City of Saint John/Fotenn Planning + Design)
Jaime Posen, a community planner with Fotenn, said that doesn’t mean thousands of units are coming in the immediate future, or even necessarily in the next 20 years.
“This is just showing the potential that could be there,” he said. “The land is there, the policy framework, this will be there with this plan … it’s really about creating a framework to allow some of this densification to happen,” Posen said.
Coun. Gary Sullivan asked city staff to address potential resident concerns that significant developments could cause them to be “pushed out.”
Burns said the focus of much of the plan will be vacant lots.
“If you’re a property owner in the old north end and you don’t want to sell your property for the next 20 to 40 years and you want to leave it to your kids … there’s nothing in the plan that changes that,” he said.
The strategy also looks at turning Lansdowne Plaza into more of an “events plaza” that could host farmers markets, festivals and a transit hub.
The city wants to turn the Lansdowne plaza into an ‘events plaza’ that could host farmers markets, festivals and a transit hub. (City of Saint John/Fotenn Planning + Design)
Historically, the north end was considered a thriving commercial area. But over time — for a variety of reasons, including an aging population, planning decisions that saw homes demolished and other factors — the area experienced a decline.
“[We’ve heard] a lot of stories about how folks remember the north end being awfully lively, how Lansdowne Plaza used to be packed every Saturday,” Burns said.
“The focus of this plan is adding units and neighbours, so you know that liveliness can return. So there is that street traffic, that sense of community that certainly still exists … but more folks in the community to take part and enjoy the great neighbourhood that it is.”
Other goals include revitalizing the north end streets and buildings while maintaining the area’s “historic character,” the document states. The city wants to increase walking and cycling infrastructure in the north end, as well as green space, by extending some of the area’s public parks.
The staff report notes that the plan is not “statutory or binding,” but there will be “an implementation plan” which will “direct improvements, by-law updates, and investments.”
The plan is slated to appear in front of council in March and aims for an April – at the latest – final approval.