On October 28th Township Council endorsed the recommended Settlement Area Boundary Report, allowing the County of Wellington to move forward with developing an amendment to the County of Wellington Official Plan needed to carry out the recommended expansion.
The Provincial Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing has approved population and employment forecasts for the County of Wellington and its member municipalities, including the Township of Centre Wellington. Centre Wellington is expected to grow to a population of 58,200 by 2051 with total employment of 25,100 by 2051. The majority of this growth will take place in the Fergus and Elora-Salem Urban Centres (settlement areas). By Provincial policy, Centre Wellington is required to use growth forecasts for long-term planning to ensure the provision of a diverse mix of housing, jobs, and services. A Land Needs Assessment completed by the County of Wellington determined that the available land within the Fergus and Elora-Salem Urban Centres could not accommodate all future land uses, and therefore a Settlement Area Boundary Expansion of approximately 398 hectares was warranted.
On September 30th, Council adopted a staff recommendation to endorse a land need requirement based on a minimum intensification target of 20% and a minimum greenfield density target of 52 people and jobs per hectare. Based on these targets, the Fergus and Elora-Salem Urban Centres would need to be expanded by 132 hectares to meet community land use needs such as housing, commercial, office and institutional uses and a further 194 hectares to support industrial employment. Based on Council’s desire to limit the expansion of the settlement area boundaries into prime agricultural areas, these targets reduced the community land need from 204 hectares.
In February 2024, the County of Wellington launched an Urban Boundary Expansion review and received settlement area boundary expansion requests totalling more than 973 hectares. The Township was requested to recommend settlement area boundary expansions to the County, based on a detailed evaluation framework. On October 15th, Township staff presented the recommended settlement area boundary expansions to Council, and last night, Council adopted the Recommended Settlement Area Boundary Expansions proposed by Township staff. The Recommended Settlement Area Boundary Expansions would satisfy the need for an additional 326 hectares of land to meet future community and employment needs.
All documents can be found to the right of this page under the document library.
For additional County of Wellington reports, please visit their website here.
Background:
The County and member municipalities are currently in the process of reviewing urban boundary expansion requests that were submitted by our deadline for municipalities that were determined to need more land through our Land Needs Assessment (LNA).
The County’s urban boundary expansion review process is detailed in Planning Committee Report PD2024-08 County Official Plan Review - Urban Boundary Expansion Review and PD2024-08 Urban Boundary Expansion Review Framework.
In January of 2023, Council authorized Township staff to retain Watson and Associates to complete a Community Land Needs Assessment that would assess alternative greenfield and intensification targets for Centre Wellington. The approved project plan calls for the assessment of four density and intensification scenarios to determine how the Land Needs Assessment prepared on behalf of the County of Wellington would be affected by alternative scenarios. In addition, the review considers the impact of the proposed South Fergus Secondary Plan on the findings of the County of Wellington Land Needs Assessment. Watson and Associates presented the draft findings to Council on November 14m 2023. The presentation can be found in the documents tab to the right of this page.
