Thank you for the…

Thank you for the opportunity to provide comments. We are the planning consultants for the Owner of lands legally identified as Part Lot 20, Concession 1, Geographic Township of Caistor, Township of West Lincoln. We participated in the Region of Niagara Municipal Comprehensive Review/New Official Plan process on behalf of our client, submitting an expansion request for approximately 7 ha from the Catisorville Rural Settlement Area onto the subject lands. We engaged with Region and Township of West Lincoln staff throughout the process, and submitted written correspondence, including a Planning Justification Brief, which is attached for your review. Both Township and Region staff indicated support for the request in correspondence to us (also see attached), and in staff reports to respective Councils. In each case, staff provided recommendations for an expansion of 7 ha, based on planning and technical analysis of the merits of the proposal. These recommendations were accepted by respective Councils and adopted into the New Official Plan by the Region. We generally support that decision, except for the SHAPE and EXTENT of the recommended and adopted expansion area. As in the attached, we proposed a different shape and extent based on a combination of the existing non-developable natural heritage features (with buffers included) and the abutting road, to get an expansion area that would provide a net of 7 ha of potentially developable area.. Conversely, the adopted expansion by the Region is 7 ha that INCLUDES non-developable lands, and thus results in a smaller and less efficient expansion area, likely closer to 6 ha. Given this, we respectfully request that the Province revisit this adopted boundary and either modify to match the shape and extent as we proposed (again, refer to our attached report) or to adopt a slightly larger expansion area of approximately 10 ha, in a regular rectangular shape similar to that adopted by the Region but larger, so that once the non-developable natural heritage features within this area are netted out, the result is approximately 7 ha of developable land. This would match the intent and purpose of the expansion request, as well as the support by staff and adoption by Council, given there were no disputes on location and size, which were each vetted and addressed through the respective settlement area boundary reviews. We trust this is satisfactory for your purposes, but we would be glad to discuss further to assist. Please contact me directly 905-317-5246 or mike.crough@ibigroup.com. Thank you.