Unlocking infrastructure in Brampton

A Peel Region housing development success story about the Chelsea Gardens project.

By: Matt Durnan

An infill development proposed for a residential apartment site in Brampton would bring a new 20-storey purpose-built residential tower to a site that already accommodates two 13-storey rental apartment buildings, adding 200 affordable rental units to the site, while helping to kick-start other proposed housing developments for sites nearby.

Peel Region has been working alongside the City of Brampton to develop an affordable rental apartment building within the existing Chelsea Gardens complex on Knightsbridge Road in Brampton as part of the Region’s housing master plan that aims to add more than 5,650 new affordable rental units to Peel’s housing stock by 2034.

Peel Region Council approved its 10-year housing and homelessness plan in 2018, with one of its key pillars directing Peel Region to create more community housing.

The proposed residential tower would add 200 new units of affordable rental housing to the site. The new units would remain affordable in perpetuity. In addition to adding greatly needed housing to the area, the proposed building is designed as a net-zero housing project that would feature a high-performance building envelope, with electricity powered through a geothermal loop and a distributed geothermal pump system. The building also features significantly less glass than is typical for most residential tower development projects, with a 20 per cent window-to-wall ratio, improving the building’s energy performance.

“Peel Region looked at the land that it owned as well as land that is municipal housing corporation owned, by the Peel Housing Corporation. We took a look at quite a few sites across the region that were owned by Peel Region and the housing corporation, and we narrowed down 9 Peel Housing Corporation sites. And the Chelsea Gardens site was one of them because there is excess land,” Peel manager of housing development Brett Barnes told NRU.
 

“From the outset, this site looked like it had the potential for an infill tower, and our first blush was to identify these nine sites and see which ones had the greatest potential for moving forward. And this site ranked up there. I think it ranked third out of the 9.”

The site, located at 4 and 10 Knightsbridge Road currently accommodates 2, 13-storey rental apartment buildings, which will remain on the site as part of the proposed redevelopment. The site is already well served by local transit and is in close proximity to a number of community amenities, including Chinguacousy Park and the Bramalea City Centre mall.

“There was a checklist that was worked through, and transit orientation was one part of it. It’s a beautiful site that is a half kilometre away from a full bus station,” Peel Region housing development team senior project manager Bob Ho told NRU.
 

“The fact that we already have the lands purchased and it’s owned by our sister organization [Peel Housing Corporation] made this a lot easier for us. This is probably an area for intensification for the coming decades, and there are a lot of other developments around us that are coming to this same location.”
 

Several residential developments are being proposed to the north of the site, but have been held up, to a degree, due to a lack of underground servicing in the area like sewer and wastewater infrastructure.
The development of the Chelsea Gardens project will serve as a catalyst to ushering in those nearby developments as Peel Region will be undertaking work to upgrade the underground infrastructure in the area.

“There’s at least 2 developments to the northwest that are looking at some mixed-use, multi-phase condo developments that I think is for about 2,000 units, and they were being held up by a lack of a sanitary network, so wastewater and sewer,” said Barnes.

“As part of our project we’re working very closely with our partners and with public works, and we’re able to expand the sewer for our project, which will help the upstream developments.”

Planning and designing the new building itself took some care and attention to detail from the team at Montgomery Sisam Architects. The architects strove to land on a design that would not only mesh well with the 2 existing buildings on the site, but would also result in a structure that would accommodate units with more generous living spaces than what you might traditionally find with this residential tower built form.

The design of the new 20-storey tower features a unique massing, which essentially breaks the building up into three sections that enabled the architects to maximize floor space within each of the new dwelling units, whether one, two or three-bedrooms.

“The massing doesn’t really follow what you’d conventionally see in Toronto, with a tall building and that 750-square-metre footprint with a podium. This is organized as almost three rectangular bars,” Montgomery Sisam principal Daniel Ling told NRU.

“When you look at the Toronto tall building guidelines, you get these kind of cookie-cutter buildings. And it might work okay with a certain size unit, but then it’s the same length when you’re designing a three-bedroom as a one-bedroom. And a lot of the time, with these condos you get a fairly long and narrow shoebox unit for a one-bedroom unit. With this one, we tried to provide three bays of different sizes … In all the instances when you look at the bedrooms and the living space, the living space is fairly generous.”

The team at Peel Region was also able to come up with its own creative solutions for the project when it comes to accommodating parking, as the site already hosts underground parking for the existing two residential buildings.

“We’re actually tapping into the existing parking structure to utilize some of that excess parking, so that will reduce the amount of parking that we have to build, which on a per-parking-space basis can be very expensive,” said Barnes.

“If we can save there, it’s great. And because of the site’s close proximity to transit, we’re able to significantly reduce the parking that is required.”

Peel Region has received planning approvals for the site as far as a zoning by-law amendment to permit the additional density that is being proposed, and the team is working alongside Brampton planning staff to work out the details of the site plan approval and building permits.

“It’s been great. Brampton’s planning staff have been super helpful, and we’re in discussions with them. And they’re looking to renovate the entire property as we’re going to be kind of messing it up over the next couple of years,” said Barnes.

“It also comes back to unlocking those developments to the north of us. And that ties into Brampton’s housing pledge to the province and their housing targets. So, I think this is a net benefit all around in terms of Peel Region and the municipality working in lockstep with each other to strive towards the same goal of getting as much housing built as possible.

Posted with permission of the publisher of NRU Publishing Inc. Original article first appeared in Novae Res Urbis GTHA, Vol. 26, No. 46, Wednesday, November 22, 2023.