{"id":37352,"date":"2025-12-11T15:05:05","date_gmt":"2025-12-11T20:05:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=37352"},"modified":"2025-12-11T15:05:15","modified_gmt":"2025-12-11T20:05:15","slug":"george-street-school-redevelopment-reduced-to-six-houses-park","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/george-street-school-redevelopment-reduced-to-six-houses-park\/","title":{"rendered":"George Street School redevelopment reduced to six houses, park"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Plans to redevelop the site of the now-demolished George Street Public School site into a community park and seven residential properties are set to be reduced by one home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Council this week is expected to approve an amendment given the thumbs-up at last week\u2019s Committee of the Whole meeting that will reduce the scope to include six rather than seven residential units.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The reduction in lot numbers was based in part on resident feedback, said Ward 2 Councillor Rachel Gilliland, and, according to Marco Ramunno, Aurora\u2019s Director of Planning, a slight reduction in the available frontage along George Street following a formal survey carried out after the demolition of the school building this past spring.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe Town made a rather big investment with the purpose of having control over the type of development that we want to have there versus having this parcel of land be sold off to the highest bidder and putting in some high-density type of development that may not be suited to the area,\u201d said Councillor Gilliland. \u201cI know I have received quite a bit of feedback from people in the community about what\u2019s being presented today, and I know while everything\u2019s not set in stone and this is a zoning change, I do want to see a little bit of reduction in those lot sizes, just in keeping with the actual area in the neighbourhood.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ramunno noted the survey resulted in a loss of 10 feet in frontage and while the seven proposed lots would be exactly 60-feet each, he didn\u2019t have an issue with six lots each with a minimum of 70-feet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Each lot would be approximately 200 feet deep, resulting in developments that would complement the character of the existing neighbourhood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While Council accepted the amendment to reduce the number of lots at the Committee level, they did so after seeking assurances that reducing the number of homes wouldn\u2019t result in a loss of projected revenue to the Town as Council hoped the sale of the lots would offset the costs paid to the York Region District School Board to secure the parkland for community use.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019m pretty confident at this point,\u201d said Ramunno, responding to questions from Ward 4 Councillor Michael Thompson. \u201cIt\u2019s always tough to try and project what the prices would be a year from now or two years from now. Ever since we started this process, I\u2019ve heard from a number of small builders who are interested in these lots. I don\u2019t think we\u2019re going to have a problem selling these lots, but I think there\u2019s definitely an interest and I don\u2019t think we\u2019re going to be losing much, if any, if we go from seven to six.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Should Council approve the lot reduction this week, the next steps in the process will be a public consultation on how the parkland will be accessed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAs for amenity space, we are somewhat limited in the space needs there, but we\u2019ve done a conceptual plan, which looks at our Parks and Recreation Master Plan and draws from it where there\u2019s some deficiencies within the area,\u201d said Sara Tienkamp, Director of Operations for the Town of Aurora. \u201cBased on that, public playgrounds are deficient in that zone, so we\u2019re proposing a playground, maybe some courts of mixed use, potentially, and some open space \u2013 a gazebo, some shade structure, etc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\u2019re not moving too quickly on that immediately right now, only because we\u2019re working on site servicing and we don\u2019t know where exactly it\u2019s going to run. It may impact some of the park design and the public consultation process timing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Brock Weir
Editor
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter<\/strong><\/p>\n\r\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Plans to redevelop the site of the now-demolished George Street Public School site into a community park and seven residential properties are set to be reduced by one home. Council this week is expected to approve an amendment given the thumbs-up at last week\u2019s Committee of the Whole meeting that will reduce the scope to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37352","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-9Is","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-18 17:18:48","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37352","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37352"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37352\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37353,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37352\/revisions\/37353"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37352"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37352"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37352"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}