Public comment was made at the City of Belleville’s Planning Committee regarding a proposal to bring housing to 84 Cannifton Road North.
The plan would call for the warehouse and commercial building on the site to be taken down in order to build three one-unit detached dwellings and six one-unit semi-detached dwellings. An existing two-unit dwelling will remain on the site.
Belleville resident Austin Gibson spoke on the proposal.
He said while he is in favour of more housing in the area, his only concerns were in regard to traffic mitigation and how it is being addressed.
“We’re looking at upwards of 20 to 30 more people, that’s potentially eight to ten more cars,” Gibson told the committee.
“The traffic mitigation circumstances here make me very hesitant, because it’s already hard enough for me to pull out of my driveway. I can’t even cross the street during the morning hours or the evening hours when everybody’s returning from work. In that regard, that is why I can’t really say it’s a net positive.”
Gibson also expressed concerns about whether the road was an arterial road or a collector road.
Councillor Paul Carr had this to say when it came to the traffic calming manners. “There’s a couple of us that sit on our transportation committee, and you probably received a survey not too long ago. We are reviewing and bringing forth a recommendation at some point for traffic calming through that area which should help mitigate some of that.”
“Unfortunately, as far as the pedestrian traffic goes, and particularly over Highway 401, that is provincial jurisdiction which complicates matters when we hope to have some connectivity, but we are working on some other connectivity along the river under the 401 and there’s some design work being done right now.”
Staff will take the information provided from public comment as well as from commenting agencies and municipal departments and turn it into a report for a future meeting.
