There have been high-rise condominiums in the downtown area of Burlington for many years, dating back to before the Millennium. The current race to apply for permits by developers began in earnest in the second decade of this century. Most, but not all applications occurred near Lakeshore Road.
Nautique
The ADI Development Group began the race for the highest building with a proposal for a 29-storey high-rise condo, including a podium for retail and office space, at the corner of Martha Street and Lakeshore Road. This is the exact location that the Save Our Waterfront group, headed by then-citizen Marianne Meed Ward, predicted, in 2009, would be the next development area at the lake creating a canyon of high rises along Lakeshore Road. It was a frontal assault with the most open views of the lake downtown in private hands. It was approved by the OMB in 2015 after the city blew their opposition position up at the final hearing but it took years for Nautique to (nearly) complete in 2024.
The Berkeley
Another high rise of note was applied for in a similar manner and time at 2025 Maria Street, with the whole property stretching north to Caroline Street. In addition to the condo building application was a promise to build a medical building and a parking garage to service both in the future. Another key promise was that they would provide some affordable housing units. The condo is known as The Berkeley, it is 17 storeys high, applied for earlier in the century but approved by Council in 2010 and completed in 2019. The developer is Carriage Gate Homes. The wrinkle was that neither the medical building nor the non-public garage beside it was ever built as promised, and no affordable housing units materialized. These three promises were integral to the developer receiving the much higher-than-zoned height, but, in the end, only the condo tower was built. The latest wrinkle is that what seems to be the same group of builders under a different name, Inaria Burlington Inc., is now applying to build a 28-storey condo on the medical site and a non-public parking garage where the public garage was supposed to be. No word, of course, of any affordable housing units this time.
The Bridgewater
In the meantime, the Bridgewater development (which had been approved by Council in the mid 1980s) finally took shape as a condo/hotel high rise right on the lake and so far, dominates the skyline from the lake (except now the Nautique is even higher and so nearby).
The Gallery – 421 Brant
The next “in your face” assault was at 421 Brant Street at James by Carriage Gate Homes. This was applied for as a 27-storey condo/retail tower right across the road from our distinctive, but much smaller, City Hall. It was a provocative ask and the downtown citizens came out in droves to try and stop it from hiding and insulting City Hall. This was in 2017 when Mayor Meed Ward was City Councillor for Ward 2. The city debated the application but our council agreed, by majority vote, to accept 23 storeys and today we see the result known as The Gallery. This was a bitter pill to swallow for many citizens and an embarrassing giveaway for that city council.
The Growth Plan Era
These are the major builds that were approved for the downtown before 2018. This was during the era of The Growth Plan created by the Ontario Liberal Government in 2008 to get more homes built in urban areas of the GTHA. It was done by designating Urban Growth Centres in the mid and large cities of Southern Ontario and Primary Mobility Hubs at GO Stations and Secondary Mobility Hubs in areas without high-speed rail connections.
Burlington Council gladly accepted both, although the Secondary Hub at the John Street Bus Kiosk was too far from the Burlington GO Station and too insignificant to actually make the cut. Metrolinx admitted that to me in 2017 and that it should not have been “attached” to the Primary Mobility HUB at Burlington GO. But they never removed the wording. So the downtown had two growth designations, going forward, that served developers well. The Provincial Conservative Government enhanced the Growth Plan further when they took over in 2018 and changed the names but not the purposes to Major Transit Station Areas and left Urban Growth Centres in place. This made it very difficult to stop the high-rise applications downtown and keep our downtown in its low to mid-rise form that citizens wanted.
Mayor Goldring’s out and Mayor Meed Ward is in
All of this information was known to the city council before 2018 as we entered an election year. Ward 2 Councillor Meed Ward was advised in her mayoralty campaign by myself and others to do two things immediately, in 2019, if she was elected along with other like-minded Councillors:
- Request that the province move the Urban Growth Centre from downtown to the MTSA Burlington GO Station, similar to what Oakville did way back in 2007
2) Request that the province remove any designation of Mobility Hub from the Bus Kiosk on John Street. This would have allowed valid reasons to avoid many high rises downtown in the future.
She did win and nearly every ward had a new councillor. Our new Mayor decided that updating the Official Plan for most of downtown and invoking the Interim Control Bylaw (ICBL) downtown and at Burlington GO MTSA was her preferred way to relieve pressure on the planning department and stop the high rises temporarily. The ICBL stops work on any brand-new applications going forward. Applications sit for one year with an option to make it two years after the first year finishes, Burlington chose the two-year option. This froze new high rises, but the applications piled up. The Official Plan was amended, but it was watered down to allow a number of downtown high-rises along with mid-rises and it did nothing to change the critical Old Lakeshore Road Precinct zoning.
So the Urban Growth Centre remained in place downtown allowing developers to argue that high rises needed to be built to satisfy the Provincial Growth Plan and the supporting Secondary Mobility Hub.
Developers have taken the position that, since they had submitted their applications under the Urban Growth Centre designation, they should not be bound by any future changes. Essentially, they flooded the city with their applications while they had plenty of time to do so.
Our updated Official Plan took many years (just recently) to finally be accepted as legitimate by the Province. The 2019 decisions ultimately allowed a lot of high rises to be built with many more permitted, but not built, in our downtown. Save Our Waterfront’s goal was discarded and abandoned by our current Council.
Conclusion
I will not list all of the coming high-rises permitted under the old UGC and MTSA rules in place from 2008 to 2020, but there are quite a number at Pearl and Lakeshore and across the road in the Old Lakeshore Precinct (beside the lake and between Old Lakeshore Road and Lakeshore Road). There are three high rises that will likely receive OLT stamps of approval soon under the old UGC/MTSA rules that will complete the canyon of high rises feared by Save our Waterfront. But instead of being the then-feared 12 – 15 storeys, they will be in the 25 – 30 storeys in height when they are completed possibly in this decade or the next. Whenever the Waterfront Hotel redo is agreed on in some future unknown manner, the canyon of high rises stretching from Brant Street along Lakeshore past Martha Street to the east entrance to Old Lakeshore Road will be complete.
The canyon no resident wanted, Save Our Waterfront was set up to stop and the new council elected in October 2018 said they would stop. Can you imagine that canyon right near the water, right where flooded channels of water try to exit into Lake Ontario using old infrastructure not designed for this? Can you imagine the traffic chaos so much worse than today along Lakeshore Road, the wind blowing through the canyon every day as you try to walk, and the impossibility of finding parking to visit anyone in these high rises or to visit Spencer Smith Park? You won’t have to imagine it, in the 2030s, it will be a reality. A reality the 2018 Council promised us would not come to pass.