City Council green-lights big apartment complex near Giant Tiger

Sault Ste. Marie City Council voted Monday night to rezone 204 South Market St. to allow 378 new apartments and townhouses adjacent to the Giant Tiger store.

ESC Land Development Corp., represented by Todd Lisso of Caledon East, Ont., also persuaded councillors to waive affordable housing requirements that would have stipulated at least 30 per cent of the dwelling unit be affordable.

As SooToday reported over the weekend, Lisso's project includes four five-storey apartment buildings, 28 attached townhouses and a 3,600-square-metre personal storage facility.

In a separate but related matter, councillors voted to postpone until Dec. 12 an application to repeal the city's existing affordable housing policies, replacing them with new policies representing a more appropriate approach to affordable housing.

Peter Tonazzo, the city's director of planning, argued that the affordable housing requirement is counterproductive and has almost always been waived for new housing developments.

Additional coverage on these matters will be posted later on SooToday.