Five-storey apartment building proposed on Allard Street

City council will be asked Monday to approve zoning changes allowing a 47-unit apartment building on the former Red Cross property at 105 Allard St.

The lot is currently zoned medium density residential housing, allowing the proposed five-storey building to be erected there.

An existing building will be demolished to make way for the new apartments.

Developer Allard SSM Inc. (Mathew Moxness) needs the city to relax a number of performance standards, including these:

• allow parking in the required front and exterior side yards. Moxness is seeking approval for parking within the entire required front yard (north lot line adjacent to Marwayne Avenue) and roughly the northern third of the exterior side yard (east lot line adjacent to Allard Street). High-quality landscaping is proposed along the entirety of the north lot line to soften aesthetic impacts and buffer the parking area from the adjacent single-detached homes to the north. A landscaped island is proposed between the two access points to the parking area, which will have the same effect
• reduce the westerly interior side yard setback from 7.5 metres to 7.0 metres. The neighbourhood is a high-density, urban residential area characterized by a number of apartment buildings with setbacks similar to those proposed
• reduce the number of required parking spaces from 59 to 37 spaces. The applicant is proposing to reduce the required parking ratio from 1.25 spaces to 0.79 spaces per dwelling unit. As part of the ‘Grow the Sault’ initiative, city planning  staff is proposing a series of parking reforms aimed at modernizing and reducing parking requirements
• waive the requirement that a loading zone be 100 per cent visually screened. The loading space will be located adjacent to the entry on the north side of the building. The city's planning division is recommending reducing required loading space lengths from 20 metres to 10, to be more in line with loading requirements found in other zoning bylaws throughout the province

Mathew Moxness has been mentioned in previous SooToday coverage of Crescendo Property Management (CPM), a Hamilton-based company that manages a number of residential and commercial properties in Niagara, Sudbury, Hamilton and Sault Ste. Marie. 

Monday's council meeting will be live-streamed on SooToday starting at 5 p.m.