City of St. Catharines Notice of Additional Open House

City Initiated Zoning By-law Housekeeping Amendment

City File No. 23 114781 ZA

The City of St. Catharines continues to review its Zoning By-law and is conducting a Housekeeping Amendment. The purpose is to address recent changes to the Planning Act by the Government of Ontario, amend policies to improve interpretation and application, and to correct grammar, punctuation and formatting.

The key elements of the Amendment include:

• Permissions for two additional residential units (accessory dwelling units) with detached, semi-detached, or townhouse dwellings, including size, height, setbacks, and parking. This includes updated standards for detached accessory dwelling units.
• Permissions for duplex, triplex and fourplex dwellings within the Low Density – Suburban Neighbourhood (R1) Zone and elimination of quadruplex dwellings from all zones, as the term is redundant and synonymous with the existing definition of townhouse dwelling.
• Updating definitions for lot lines, yards, and encroachments, such as decks, patios, and porches (platform structures).
• Revising parking space dimensions, bicycle and accessible parking requirements and introducing parking area requirements, such as minimum drive aisle widths.
• Definitions relating to landscaped open space and landscape buffers and inclusion of maximum hard landscaping coverage.
• Inclusion of a transition clause, updated page numbers, revised section numbers, and other various formatting elements.

Updated amendment materials are available for review and comment online at EngageSTC.ca/Zoning or in person at the Planning and Building Services Department at City Hall at 50 Church Street in St. Catharines.

The information currently available is preliminary. Additional revised, or further refined information will be loaded to the project page at the link above as it becomes available.

The City will host a second drop-in style Open House, where the updated materials will be available for review and staff will be present to receive comments and answer questions.

Second Open House

Date: Thursday, Jan. 25, 2024
Time: 3 p.m. to 7 p.m.
Location: Atrium, Third Floor, City Hall, 50 Church Street, St. Catharines

Given that the subject amendment regulates the use of lands throughout the geographic boundaries of the City of St. Catharines, a key map has not been provided with this notice.

All written comments and input received by Jan. 31, 2024, will be included in staff’s recommendation report to Council. Council is tentatively scheduled to consider this matter on Feb. 26, 2024, after hearing all submissions as part of a Public Meeting that same evening. Further notice of the legislated Public Meeting will be issued once the date is confirmed.

For more information about this matter, including information about appeal rights, contact:

Taya Devlin, Senior Planner
Planning and Building Services Department
tdevlin@stcatharines.ca 
905.688.5601, ext. 1709 or TTY: 905.688.4889

For more information visit EngageSTC.ca/Zoning.