Gary Switzer on the Site Plan Review Process

By Penny Munoz

With the cost of housing in Toronto on the rise, optimizing the site plan approval process is a pressing topic for industry professionals, as well as new-home buyers. As industry professionals know, the longer a project takes to be approved, the more it costs to build, which inevitably becomes an issue for homebuyers because the cost trickles all the way down, increasing prices at every level.

Following up with CEO of MOD Developments Inc. Gary Switzer, after the conference about the OAA’s findings on the site plan review process, we can really see the impact on housing affordability.

The review, comprised of data collected from 31 municipalities made recommendations that would essentially lower costs for municipalities, developers, local economies and of course, homebuyers. Though it sought to represent concerns and recommendations across the province in order to collectively prescribe a standard plan to help speed up the process, the review’s tendency to generalize municipal needs left some factors undefined. Only dealing with ‘as-of right’ site plan review, the report excluded the costs of rezoning projects. Since Toronto is a typically under zoned city, most development projects have to be rezoned, which leads to more costs for developers. According to Switzer, for the majority of projects in the city, consideration of combined wait times for site plan and rezoning reviews make the issue much more costly than what the OAA’s review actually indicates.

As some panel members suggested, a provincially enforced site plan review standard may be the answer. However, since the number of development applications ranges so dramatically between municipalities, it is difficult to produce standards that will serve the contrasting needs of every city.

“One size really doesn’t fit all,” says Switzer “Even relatively speaking, a city like London, Ottawa or Kingston has nowhere the development activity that Toronto does. It’s a lot easier to have everybody sit around a table and talk about things in a smaller community than it is in Toronto because Toronto has been going through one of the biggest building booms in its history. Toronto faces challenges that no other city in the province does right now.”

As of 2011, when the Planning Act was last amended, mostly every building (with certain exceptions) must go through site plan review, a revision that doubled the workload for City staff. The previous process of the site plan review concerned only the technical aspects of buildings, but current provincial standards mean that staff is working longer on buildings.

According to Switzer, the focal point of the Ontario Planning Act is supposed to be technical review, but contradictory writing within the act negatively affects the length of time in the process by incorporating massing into application prerequisites. The inclusion of massing in the site plan review means that the application must include design aspects like heights and setbacks, which are typically included in rezoning applications. The blurring of these lines not only creates confusion between cities about what information needs to be presented and on what application, but it also requires significantly more labour.

A complete application requires about 20 studies and servicing reports outlining urban design and effects on traffic and sidewalks that need to be reviewed by two municipal departments. In order to meet new city standards, developers need to hire a team of building code experts and specialized consultants, which also ends up increasing the overall cost of housing in the city. The process is set out to produce better developments, but is this the case?

Emphasizing how important it is to strengthen the process of site plan approval, Switzer says that it could be valuable for the provincial government to clarify what should be covered during site plan review and what should be covered in rezoning. He also stressed the importance of employing skilled urban planners who can provide knowledgeable, relevant contributions to applications and push timelines in order to present reports at monthly council meetings.