The site at 1, 3, 5 & 7…

The site at 1, 3, 5 & 7 Rossland Road East and 901 Harwood Avenue, in Ajax, should be converted from employment area to community area. The site is already de facto converted, and functions as a retail shopping centre. As such it does not qualify as area of employment under the new definition in the Planning Act, which makes it clear that Areas of Employment have manufacturing and warehousing as the only permitted principal space extensive uses. The neighbourhood context makes the location of warehousing or manufacturing on this site both inappropriate and unlikely. The Region has converted all of the formerly employment lands to the north of this site in this Official Plan. The Rossland Road lands area now an isolated pocket of employment designation, remote from other employment areas, and relating to the surrounding residential communities. The site includes a vacant parcel of land that is ideal for residential intensification, at a location that is also ideal for intensification, located at the intersection of two Durham Transit routes. Such residential intensification would mirror a recently constructed high-rise residential building located to the west across Harwood Avenue.

Conversion of the subject site is necessary to ensure the designation conforms with the Planning Act.