Iron Horse Trail to get re-routed for condos

Waterloo city council has voted in favour of selling and moving a portion of the Iron Horse Trail so a developer can construct a new condo building uptown.

Councillors voted 4-2Monday night in favour ofa deal to sell 761 square metres ofthe trailbetween Caroline and Park streets just south of Allen Street West to Mady Development Corporation for $83,000 and 700 square metres of the company's property.

"This was one of our most difficult decisions that weve had to make in a long time," Waterloo Mayor Brenda Halloran told Colin Butler on The Morning Edition Tuesday.

The City of Waterloo is running out of land. We have firm boundaries. We cant sprawl into the rural areas, which is important. We also have to be realistic about where is our future growth is going to be and it is going to be in our uptown core and intensification is going to be critical for our future urban growth,"said Halloran.

Mady was seeking to build a 19-storey condo building at 155 Caroline Street, a development that overlaps in part that stretch of the trail. Council also voted 4-2 Monday in favour of that proposeddevelopment.

It will be built directly adjacent to another building at 144 Park Street that had alreadybeen approved for development prior to Monday's vote.

Thetrail will now be moved southeastso it connects Caroline and Park streets by running between a commercial parking lot on John Street and the condo property line to the north.

Fifteenresidents attended the meeting to voice their concerns. Most were against moving the trail, with some saying the community wasn't adequately consulted.

"The trail is going to be there, and vibrant and usable. Its just going being realigned, so were not losing any portion of the trail," said Halloran.

"We will be able to add amenities to it, there will be 12 metres of space that will be used for not onlycycling, butfor walking, for [an] urban parkette. Theres going to be a lot of opportunities to create really exciting urban, liveable, walkable landscape there that will be part of the Iron Horse trail," she added.

Parking, precedent hot-button issues

Michael Druker, who used to live in the area, spoke out against whathe thoughtwas too many parking spots, sayingthere would be reduced traffic if residents had to find alternate means of transportation. The development is also one block west of a future LRT station on King Street,

The building at 155 Caroline Street would have 247 parking spaces for 192 residential units, while the adjacent development at144 Park Street would have 159 parking spaces for 148 units.

Under zoning rules, the city only had to provide one parking spot per residential unit.

But city staff said in a reporttheybelieved that Mady "is providing sufficient parking, allowing for some units to purchase an additional parking space and also allowing for an appropriate amount of visitor parking, while not providing so much parking that it discourages alternative forms of transportation."

One delegate at the meeting, Kae Elgie, said shethought it would set a dangerous precedent to allow the sale of parts of the trail.

But Jan D'Ailly, the chair of Waterloo advisory committee on active transportation said the section in question is very small. He spoke in favour of moving the trail and cited the benefits of having the developer invest in upgrades to it.

Coun. Melissa Durrell, who voted in favour of the development, said she was looking forward to welcoming hundreds of new residents to uptown Waterloo.