Waterloo - The Waterloo Region Home Builders’ Association (WRHBA) has participated in the development of policies at the provincial, regional and local levels of government to help protect housing choice and affordability for new home buyers. It is abundantly clear that all current policies lead to more density, intensification and redevelopment in existing residential areas.

It was interesting to see that the editorial staff at both the Record and the Waterloo Chronicle in their June 3rd editions picked up on the issue of intensification initiatives prompted primarily by the recent approval by Waterloo Council of the 144 Park Street project. This is the site of the old Ontario Table and Chair building at Park Street and Allen Street in Waterloo that is now approved to proceed with a 19 storey condominium development along the King Street corridor. The 144 Park Street development did not create the policies that direct developers to better utilize existing infrastructure and create density that would support transit; they are only implementing those policies.

Both articles rightly highlight the fact that the intensification that current planning legislation bestows on this Region will, by its very nature, continue to create confrontations between development interests trying to implement it and surrounding neighbourhoods that neither understand the planning context, nor want to understand it, if it means change to their immediate circumstance. Change is something that mankind’s psyche inherently shuns even though it has been borne out over the course of history that adaption to change is what so often defines the human spirit. Waterloo Councilor Jan d’Ailly summed it up well when he said, “Intensification can be scary, it really can”.

Scary or not, this Region is on the cusp of significant changes in land use and housing form all being brought about by new regulations emanating from the Province and filtering down through Regional and local Official Plans. We also cannot ignore the huge impact that the possible reinvention of our transit system will have on land uses that will flank its route. The changes to transit being contemplated are viewed as being the catalyst of change supporting additional intensification.

WRHBA President, Brian Blackmere.