A developer is looking to build a four-storey 16-unit apartment building at 21 Pine St. S, right next to Trinity United Church.
On Tuesday morning, City Hall invited the city's Heritage Committee to give their feedback on the project.
The developer is looking to have a parking lot in the front and the building in the back.
“The developer was hesitant to move the property forward because he was worried it would impact on the church adjacent and would take away from its prominence," said the city's senior development planner, Marc Davidson.
But City Hall staff is not in favour of having the parking lot at the front of the lot.
“If the parking were in the back, how would you get to the parking?” asked the Chair of the Heritage Committee, Anna O'Hare. “You can see the lot is very narrow so the whole concept of the building would have to be changed in order to get cars to pass by it.”
Luckily, City Hall staff has already thought of a few suggestions on how to tweak the proposal.
“One is to take out a couple of units on the ground floor and allow a tunnel to go through to the rear,” said Davidson. “The second conceptual idea was to approach the church and talk about perhaps an easement to access the property to the rear for parking. It’s not ideal but we’re spitballing ideas at this point to get us to a design that is desirable.”
According to Davidson, the developer has indicated that they might have to increase the amount of storeys if they were forced to nix the building's ground floor to accommodate a tunnel.
Heritage Committee members voiced their concern that construction of the new complex would negatively impact the integrity of Trinity United Church.
“The church has had structural issues before,” said Linda Borland. “If you’re digging in the ground for foundations, will that hurt the church?”
Davidson explained that as a part of a heritage impact assessment study there would be a pre-development survey and a post-development survey, to keep an eye on any damage sustained during construction.
“You would look at the differences and hopefully there aren’t any but if there were some I believe it would become more of a legal matter than anything to review that,” he said.
City Hall staff thinks that moving the church closer to the street could possibly alleviate those structural concerns.
“By pulling that property up to the front it is actually moving it further away from the church,” said Davidson. “It won’t get rid of any potential impacts on the adjacent property but it will minimize [them].”
The project is still in early development and will have to go through city council before moving forward.
