Regina City Council votes to have gyms in industrial areas as a permitted use

Regina City Council has voted to keep gyms and fitness facilities as permitted uses in light industrial and industrial prestige areas. They also voted to have gyms in heavy industrial areas be a discretionary use.

This comes after significant public pushback to the original proposal to not allow any new gyms in those areas.

All of this will now go before the public again for four weeks, then council will discuss it again.

More than 170 people weighed in on the gym changes, whether in person at the Mondaymeeting or via a letter to council. Mayor Michael Fougeresaid that had a big impact on council's decision Tuesday.

"We felt strongly that if it it isn't broke let's not try to fix it," Fougere said during a break.

"The delegations were ... pretty persuasive."

Coun. Joel Murray is the one who put forward the proposal to have things remain the way they are. He said that the official community plan has a lot of great goals, but sometimes it doesn't line up with how things are going in the city, like in this case.

"The community has really rallied around folks in the Warehouse District providing these services, and they're very happy about it," he said.

Murray also said that a lot of these places are providing youth programming in areas close to North Central, so it's easier for families to just walk.

Another change councillors voted on was a residential zoning issue that would affect where density boosting efforts would be focused.

The city was considering a change to the zoning in the area from a R1-Residential to RN-Residential Neighbourhood a change to allow more than single detached houses. Councillors decided to keep neighbourhoods zoned R1 as R1, which basically means that those zones will continue to have single-family homes.

As for the sign and zoning bylaws as a whole, council has tabled them both so that the changes can be advertised andthe public can take a look at them.

Reporter Emily Pasiuk wasat council Tuesday night. Follow her tweets here:

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