Moving forward

Council approves Wellington Heritage District Plan

After what some feel was far too short of a consultation process, a Heritage Conservation District (HCD) in Wellington has been approved. At Tuesday night’s meeting, Council saw a revised plan after many comments and suggestions were heard at a meeting earlier this summer.

The Wellington HCD Plan is the second and final component of the Heritage Conservation District planning process for the village, a process that began with completion of the HCD Study, which commenced in July 2019. The Study determined that the Wellington downtown core study area meets the province’s criteria for designation as a HCD. Council adopted the Study on May 11, 2021 and directed staff and the consultant Bray Heritage to proceed with preparation of the HCD Plan.

There are different components to the HCD Plan, but its primary role is to ensure that heritage buildings, structures and landscapes are not destroyed or significantly altered in a way that diminish their value to the community. The HCD Plan will introduce measures aimed at creating a visually appealing area that will, in turn, help to enhance that distinctive sense of place. The boundary of the proposed Wellington HCD will include the original part of Wellington at the intersection of Belleville and Main Streets, including the former harbour and existing docks, extending to the residential area and then to the institutional core. From here, it continues to the commercial core, to the westerly development, which is a combination of former industrial and later residential, then a small chunk up Consecon Street. In total, it encompasses 240 properties.

At Tuesday’s meeting, several property owners spoke against approving the plan. Richard Elliott said he supports the concept of a HCD, but that he wants to make sure it is right. “I certainly support and have throughout the concept of a HCD. I actually am a pretty big proponent of it,” he said. “My concerns are not the idea of heritage, it’s the specific plan. The scope of it. The restrictiveness of the language and what I think may be some unintended consequences.”

Elliott said the HCD significantly curtails the ability to provide housing downtown. “We hear repeatedly about the need for more housing in downtown Wellington, for a greater diversity of mixes of housing types, and for housing that contributes to a walkable community. The HCD significantly curtails the ability to achieve those goals in the centre of Wellington, relegating the pursuit of new housing primarily to new development on the outskirts, entailing increased use of cars. But what about people who cannot afford a car, or who no longer drive, or who just prefer to be able to walk around the village, or in any case want the urban experience of living right in the centre of the village?” asked Elliott.

As is the case at past meetings, Wellington property owner Anthony Lemke told Council to press pause and make sure it gets the plan right. “You know that my contention is that I don’t think there is significant room to breathe for the development objectives and the other policy objectives in the Secondary Plan under the HCD,” said Lemke.

Lemke told Council that by approving the HCD, it is not giving itself more powers than it already has. “You are not being asked to adopt powers you don’t already have. If you wanted to protect heritage in accordance with the terms of the HCD you could do it. It’s in the Secondary Plan. What you are doing is constraining yourself. For those 240 properties, which is our entire village core and part of the village corridor. You are constraining yourself to put heritage guidelines first over and above all other objectives in the Secondary Plan,” he said.

Lemke also took issue with buildings such as Foodland being labelled as not contributing. “Anybody who has lived in Wellington understands that its not a beautiful building. But to say that is not contributing is flat-out wrong,” said Lemke. “If I can’t build a building that looks and feels like a Foodland and has the size of a Foodland, I can’t build a Foodland downtown. And under the Heritage Guidelines I can’t build today’s Foodland at 10,000 square feet. I can’t build a large pharmacy when we double the size of the town,” he added.

Councillor Mike Harper explained that Wellington has a disproportionate number of heritage buildings for its size. “One of the reasons is it was left alone during the massive redevelopment in the 70s through 90s when a lot of communities also faced a lot of decimated heritage building stock,” said Harper. “It’s really been the last ten years there are these pressures. Carl was under pressure to make it even bigger.”

Lemke told Council he has never asked for it to be smaller. “I have said because it is large, let’s make sure that we can get it right. That we can have both visions for our Main Street exist. I am not saying take them out. I am not saying don’t have my properties or the commercial properties subject to HCDs. If I come to you and say I want to build a new Foodland, I don’t want it to be in a cornfield, I want it to actually be downtown so the people who live in the new development in the cornfield can come down and park their cars next to the water when they go shopping because that’s what a waterfront town is,” said Lemke. “Let’s protect the whole damn Main Street, but let’s make sure we are balancing it right. That we get both visions of the future that respect heritage.”

Ottawa-based conservation architect and urbanist Mark Thompson Brandt of MTBA was hired by Lemke to do a PEER review of the HCD. He told Council that HCDs in Ontario can be very successful, but only if they are done right. “They are to be in harmony with heritage objectives, but also other objectives a community has. Certainly when I look at Wellington I see a similarity with other communities we have done work for and definitely see a potential for commercial migrating north of the Millennium Trail,” said Brandt, who added it is not a good result as downtown often becomes dead as everybody migrates to the box malls.

Brandt also added that the HCD identifies six distinct character areas and it treats them all the same. “There is nothing I could find in my review that treated each of the character areas differently. I wonder why not allow mixed residental commercial to continue to grow organically as it has done over the years, and prepare for that growth in a managed heritage-compatible way,” he stated.

Manager of Planning Mike Michaud told Council that the HCD and the Secondary Plan are meant to work hand-in-hand. “One is to support the other. The HCD does talk about having design guidelines for it could be a small section of the village or the entire village. One could think of the HCD being design guidelines for components of the village. They work off one another,” aid Michaud, who added the HCD states a higher standard of design or development needs to take place.

Michaud also noted that after comments from the public on the last draft, much of the prescriptive wording has been changed. “The original wording was used much like the Planning Act—shall be consistent with—and that held development to a certain standard. That has since been changed. We use the word should now instead of shall and have regard to which is a lesser level of requirement for development,” he said, adding that this gives greater flexibility for landowners who want to develop in this area.

A bylaw will have to be passed in order for the HCD to be adopted. The public will have 30 days from the publication of the bylaw to appeal the decision. If there are no appeals received the HCD will come into effect.