Mill Street commercial building zoning approved

Clearview council approved a zoning bylaw amendment for 143-145 Mill St. at its June 13 meeting, advancing a proposal by Mannington Investments to replace two buildings on Creemore’s main street with one two-storey building.

The plan is to replace the commercial units with one building that will have four commercial units on the main floor, and four apartments on the second floor.

The amendment is required to address a lack of parking. Planner Rossalyn Workman said the owners propose 10 parking spaces on site, which will more than accommodate the residential units proposed, but leaves a deficiency of nine parking spaces for the commercial component of the project.

As a solution, the owners will pay cash-ln-lieu of parking spaces. The proposed location for the additional parking spaces is on township-owned property located at 15 Elizabeth Street West, at the back of the Creemore Medical Centre. The owners will be contributing $18,000 towards the improvement of the parking area there, which is expected to have 20 spaces total.

At a public meeting held in August, several public comments were received. Workman reported that township staff has been working with the architect, planners, engineers and the public to address the comments.

The building was originally proposed to be built at an angle to the sidewalk to create café style seating but has since been reconfigured to be parallel to the sidewalk, although there will be a bit more space to meet hydro pole setback requirements.