Transit village: City looks to spur housing at Kellogg, Richmond Row

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City hall is looking to tweak its master planning document to spur more high-density development at two major destinations in central London.

The city is looking to designate both the intersection of Oxford and Richmond streets, one of the city’s busiest, and the former Kellogg lands in east London as “transit villages,” in a new planning application.

Under the London Plan, the city’s master planning document, a transit village allows for looser height restrictions on buildings allowing for more high density, mixed-use development, but also is exempted from typical parking minimums.

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The designation came from rapid transit planning in the city a decade ago, when light rail and later bus rapid transit (BRT) branches were planned for the north, west, east, and south, all connected through downtown. London has four existing transit villages, all where the BRT corridors were proposed to end.

The designation is also meant to spur “higher order” transit use, which can be anything that gives transit use its own right-of-way, from bus traffic signals and jump lanes, all the way up to BRT, light rail, and subways.

For John Fleming, a principal with City Planning Solutions and the city’s former planning director, turning the Kellogg factory lands into a transit village is a no brainer as the site is looking to transform.

The lands are already on the east leg of the BRT network, and the main factory building has been transformed into a commercial and entertainment hub, that will soon welcome a Hard Rock hotel and the Children’s Museum of London. Complete with apartments and condos, it could be comparable to Toronto’s distillery district, he said.

“The transit village will give us the opportunity to develop residential units of a significant density to create a really interesting urban neighbourhood, and that would include, at the heart of it, this wonderful … complex,” Fleming said. “This is something that outside of the downtown, really doesn’t exist at this point.”

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As for Oxford and Richmond, the northern end of Richmond Row could similarly become an attractive urban neighbourhood with more housing, Fleming said.

Deputy mayor Shawn Lewis is vice-chair of council’s planning and environment committee. He welcomes the idea of dense residential development in both areas, especially as 100 Kellogg Lane becomes “an entertainment destination in the city.

“For this particular area, (I’m) very supportive of the conversion to residential, because I think that is a vision for the area that’s going to work very well for the city moving forward,” he said.

However, he questions why Oxford and Richmond would be proposed as a transit village. The north leg of the BRT, which would have connected Masonville Place, Western University and St. Joseph’s Hospital with downtown primarily along Richmond Street, was cancelled by city council in 2019.

Lewis said he wants to avoid a situation such as the transit village at Oxford and Wonderland, where a slew of high-density developments are planned despite city council’s decision to scrap BRT west leg.

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“I think we have to have more conversation around the master mobility plan, and the outcomes of that, before we start going and putting transit village designations on areas that don’t have rapid transit service,” Lewis said. “I think it’s getting the cart before the horse a little bit.”

To that end, staff will report back to council this summer about changes to the transit village policy required by the federal government after the city signed onto its housing accelerator fund.

The first components of London’s new master mobility plan, a plan to dictate how Londoners will get around through 2050 and the supporting projects needed, will also likely be unveiled in the fall, Lewis said.

jmoulton@postmedia.com

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