Thunder Bay to consider selling surplus land for infill, housing

Thunder Bay City Council will considering selling some of its surplus land, including parkland, for infill and development.

Councillors on Monday voted in favour of the resolution, which was brought forward by Coun. Kasey Etreni.

"The city has a large amount of city-owned land, some of which would be in the city's best interest to surplus and sell for the purpose of development," a memo from Etreni states. "Along with reducing the amount of city-owned land that might need operating or capital investment, such as parking lots, vacant land and parkland, this could help to boost infill and provide much-needed additional housing."

The resolution doesn't call for the report to include valuations, but only provide an inventory and administration recommendations as to which properties would be in the city's best interest to sell.

Etreni said Thursday the resolution was partially prompted by the recent city budget.

"Our [tax levy] percentage was quite high, and we don't want to burden the people in our community with a large tax rate," Etreni told CBC News. "So I started investigating ways to bring down that tax rate besides what we decided around the table. And one of those ways, of course, is to increase your tax base."

In addition, Etrenisits on the the District of Thunder Bay Social Services Administration Board, and "we know that we are lacking housing in our community," she said.

Joel Depeuter, the city's director of development services, said the city does periodically catalog its surplus lands. However, that had not been done in some time.

"There's also some interest in looking at parking areas, and perhaps there are underutilized park areas that aren't part of the typical review," he said.

Depeuter said the city does have a number of surplus properties that could accommodate housing.

"Some of those are not quite ready to market, or they require some service extensions orsome access extensions," he said. "Now is a good time to look at those."

Amendment defeated

Current River Coun. Andrew Fouldsmoved an amendment to remove parkland from the report, but that was voted down 8-5.

"I just think it's fundamentally wrong," he said regarding the city considering sale of parkland. "When we askdevelopers to develop subdivisions, we asked them for five per centparkland, because we know that parks and parkettes are the glue for neighbourhoods."

"It's the meeting place for neighbourhoods," he said. "I think whether it's a new development or an established development, these parks serve a humongous social function."

Foulds said parkland can also assist with stormwater management in the city.

"The other piece of this though, and I am actually comfortable with this, is we have these open spaces, green spaces that simply have not been developed yet," he said. "They're actually zoned future residential."

"So I have no problem looking at those particular pieces, but the pieces that are designated green space, with a specific purpose of canopy cover, stormwater management,these are important pieces."

"And then, of course, parkland where people go and meet and recreate. Those are no-go zones for me."

Etreni said parklands were included in the resolution to ensure the report provides a full picture of what surplus lands are available in Thunder Bay.

"I want to be really clear when we're talking about things like parkland," Etreni said. "It would not be Vickers Park, for example, because that's utilized, it's very well utilized."

"I would want to be looking at the areas that may be potentially underutilized, or areas wherewe have a parkette, and then two blocks later we have another parkette, an area where there's other parklands adjacent."

"I really can stress that I love parklands," she said. "But I think we need to look at the whole picture when we're looking at what potentially we could put for sale, and put some housing on."