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Housing

Fifty-six storeys beside Oakville GO. Whose call?

The province issued four zoning orders for towers up to 56 storeys and 6,881 condo units in Midtown Oakville, over the objections of council and residents. Council then approved its own 14-building, 5,600-home plan on the old GE lands next door.

Asked September 41,892 votesOpen for 29 more days

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What the GTA says so far

  • The province is right. A GO station in a low-rise town is wasted land.26%
  • Council's plan. Thirty-eight storeys and 5,600 homes is plenty.36%
  • Neither. Oakville is not Mississauga and does not want to be.21%
  • Whichever gets built first. The town needs the homes.17%

Results update after you vote.

Why we’re asking

Midtown is the land between the QEW and the rail corridor around Oakville GO: for decades a district of car dealerships, a GE plant and parking. Everybody agrees it should be something else. Nobody agrees on how tall.

The province’s answer arrived as four Minister’s Zoning Orders: a transit-oriented community of eleven buildings up to 56 storeys and 6,881 condo units bounded by the QEW, Trafalgar, the rail line and Hogs Back Park. The mayor called the plan irresponsible nonsense. Council rejected it. It does not need council.

Council’s own answer came in July, and it passed unanimously: the Rose Corporation’s redevelopment of the 11-acre former GE site on South Service Road, fourteen buildings from five to 38 storeys and about 5,600 homes. It is not small. It is what the town decided it could take.

The question underneath is the one every GO-station town in the 905 is about to get: how much density a station has to carry, and who gets to say.

Sources: The Trillium, four zoning orders issued · Oakville News, “irresponsible nonsense” · Daily Commercial News, council approves the 14-tower project · Oakville News, the former GE lands approval

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