Summerside council says no to high-density housing in city's north end

Summerside council unanimously voted against rezoning a portion of land in the Greenwood Drive area for high-density housing.

More than 50 people attended the council meeting, most of them opposing the project proposed by Stratford's Flourish Development Group. The project would have added about 600 housing units to the area in the form of 17 apartment buildings.

Residents voiced concerns over traffic and worried the Pope Road and Greenwood Drive intersection wouldn't be able to handle the added vehicles in the area.

Summerside Mayor Dan Kutcher broke a tied vote to allow a resident to speak about their concerns for about five minutes. Kutcher also broke a tied vote allowing a staff member with the developer to speak.

"I think we all feel relieved. We know that it is probably still going to be developed, the field next to Greenwood Drive." says Stephanie Betts, adding she is not against growth but 17 apartment buildings would have been too much.

"It was more an issue of safety and traffic in our subdivision. It's a pretty quiet subdivision, so to have two brand new streets with thousands of people feeding onto our Greenwood Drive and into our neighborhood, just not a great idea."

According to documents in last month's planning meeting package, rezoning the area to high density would result in more than 3,000 vehicles per day — more than double the current traffic load for the area currently at 1,400 vehicles per day.

Council did vote to allow a portion of the land to be rezoned for low-density housing, meaning duplexes could be built in the area. Betts has no issue with the zoning to allow for duplexes to be built, she said.

"We kind of figured that's what would happen, and we know we need housing on P.E.I. desperately," Betts said, adding she thinks there is space for high-density housing in the city, but there are no areas in Summerside which could handle 17 apartment buildings.

'The majority of them were against both rezonings'

Justin Doiron is the councillor for Ward 2, where the development would have taken place.

"There is criteria we have to weigh, and comments from residents is one of them. I don't know if I can put a number on the amount of emails that have come in in the last 3-4 weeks, but it is easily in the hundreds," he said.

"My reasoning for voting against was due to the comments I heard from residents, as well as issues I see with traffic and safety in general."

All councillors aside from Doiron did vote to allow a portion of the land be rezoned for duplexes to be constructed, but for now the majority of the 25-hectare site will remain as fields.

"Through those hundreds of emails I received… the majority of them were against both rezonings right from the start," Doiron said, adding he hopes to see more ideas for development in the Greenwood Drive area presented.

'We are going to work together to make it work'

Jen Du, general manager for Flourish Development Group, said the developer is committed to working with the community to try and find a solution.

"We just kind of want to… build a bigger community," Du said. "Whatever we are doing we just want to meet kind of like the needs here.

"We will go back and discuss with our professional teams and also with planning board. We are going to work together to make it work."

"The result is not what we are expecting, but still it is kind of like everything works out eventually."

In the past week, Summerside has issued two releases. One on "unprecedented growth" in the city. According to the release, there have been a total of 191 housing starts in the city since the beginning of the year.

A different release by the city focused on population increases. According to that release, Summerside is expected to have its population grow to more than 20,000 by 2031.

A recent Statistics Canada report states the amount of people coming into the province is outpacing housing starts on P.E.I. during the first quarter of 2023.