Envision St. John’s and the Heritage By-Law will overlap throughout our designated heritage areas and anywhere there is a designated heritage building.  Please note that many of our heritage buildings are located in heritage areas, but some are not.

If the City received a development application or a rezoning application in a heritage area, we would apply the development policies of our Envision St. John’s Municipal Plan, including policies on types of development (residential, commercial, institutional, and so on) and our heritage policies.  For development matters, we would use the standards and zoning in the Envision St. John’s Development Regulations to assess land uses, lot size, building size and height, required yard spaces, off-street parking, and so on.

And we would use the heritage standards in the Heritage By-Law to assess building design, architectural style, building materials, window styles and openings, door styles, lighting, signs (in the case of commercial or institutional buildings), and so on.

Envision St. John’s and the Heritage By-Law intertwine in the heritage areas.  They also intertwine when evaluating a development application or rezoning application that involves a designated heritage building outside of any heritage area.

Thank you for your question. The St. John’s Ecclesiastical District National Historic District of Canada was set a few years ago by the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada and is overseen by Parks Canada.  It is commemorative in nature.  The responsibility for administering land use and development in any national historic district is the responsibility of the particular province or municipality, as appropriate.

We have three national historic districts in St. John’s:

• The Ecclesiastical District, which marks the various downtown churches, convents, monasteries, schools and cemeteries that helped shape the social and religious character of the community.
• The Water Street District, which extends from the intersection of Water Street and George Street/Beck’s Cove westward to encompass both sides of Water Street and the Murray Premises – this marks the merchant history of the old seaport, our earliest commercial core along the “Lower Path”.
• The Rennie’s Mill Road District, which runs along the west side of Bannerman Park and marks the increasing wealth in the community that could enable such an array of large, fine houses to be built.

None of these districts is expected to remain static.  They are still subject to development applications, perhaps sometimes even rezoning applications, such as the current application to rezone the Cathedral Parish Hall property at 68 Queen’s Road for redevelopment.  Parks Canada wishes to ensure that its Standards and Guidelines are followed in evaluating any proposed developments.  To that end, they have recently committed the City that they would provide comment on any proposed developments that are referred to them.

We appreciate the citizen interest in preserving and adapting our built heritage to ensure that it endures, while providing opportunities for new activities and developments that fit into our old neighbourhoods and which respect the national historic districts.

A: Regarding parking minimums, we do have a provision for parking relief, where Council can relieve some or all of the required parking if the applicant can show that it’s not needed.  We understand the concern that parking minimums mean buildings have to provide off-street parking, on the property, within the building, or nearby.  The City has committed to reviewing all of its parking standards in the St. John’s Development Regulations in the coming year.

Regarding housing types, different types of houses provide the same thing (a place to live) in different designs and different densities.  Some of our residential zones such as R2 and R3 allow for a variety of house types.  However, past conversations over introducing more house types into the R1 Zone (our most common zone) have not been well received.

We do have the advantage of allowing subsidiary apartments in single houses in almost all of our residential zones.

The various apartment zones have been created to help new development fit in to existing neighbourhoods.  A tall apartment building may be welcomed downtown but opposed in a suburban neighbourhood.

Thanks for thinking about the future of our city.

Thanks Josh for your feedback. Responses to your specific questions/queries below:

• Section 4.8: Any particular reason for specifying a newspaper for notifications?  You are correct that the requirement of newspaper notice is written in the NL Urban and Rural Planning Act.  The City is free to use other means (and we use mailouts plus the City’s website, Facebook page and Twitter feed), but newspapers are the minimum mandated.
• Building lines on arterial streets (Sec 7.2.2) - just curious as to the justification for such a huge right-of-way for Kenmount/Topsail/Torbay/Logy Bay Roads - all over 50 metres.  These numbers reflect the size of the rights-of-way on these roads.
• Comprehensive Development Area Zoning (P. 151) what's the rationale for these specific ones? Seems like a mix of greenfield and existing neighbourhoods, and doesn't match with the Intensification Areas from the Municipal Plan.  Comprehensive development areas or CDAs are different from intensification areas.  The CDAs are areas where conditions are not yet right for development, so they are in this holding zone.  In contrast, the intensification areas are already zoned and ready for development; but if a developer is interested, the City is willing to examine the area for opportunities to increased development density if it makes sense.
• Trees - it seems like section 7.6.1 would be the place to mandate trees for residential areas, but no mention there. In general, not very many mentions of tree requirements at all.  Tree requirements are regulated under a tree by-law moreso than under the City’s Development Regulations.
• Downtown parking: I (and many others I'm sure) would be supportive of the removal of all parking minimums for downtown developments, or the waiving of cash-in-lieu :-)  Council is moving to restore the possibility of parking relief downtown – that is, being able to reduce the amount of parking required for a specific application if the applicant can show why the City’s standard is too high.  That is different, though, from removing parking minimums.
• Hardly any mention that I could find of the intensification areas marked out in the Municipal Plan - curious to see how that all plays out going forward.  We will see how property owners and developers move forward in those areas.

if you have additional questions or feedback, please send it along.

Thanks for reaching out. City staff are happy to meet with the SJFPC to discuss the draft Envision Development Regulations.  Someone will follow up with you to arrange a time. 

A: Any application for parking relief is evaluated against our parking standards.  We ask the applicant to justify why the actual parking required should be less than the City’s standards.  The information may include: examples of similar land uses and their actual parking; comparison of St. John’s standards with those of other municipalities; information on business hours (a business may operate at times when parking is usually available in the immediate area); or other information.  Staff evaluates this and provides a recommendation to Council, which Council votes on.

In cases where an application requires a land-use report (most rezonings and some development applications require those reports), the information on parking relief would be publicized when the report is publicly advertised, and public comments would be brought to Council before their vote takes place.

In areas of the City where on-street parking by non-residents is a problem, the City uses its Residential Parking Permit Program.  If this doesn’t exist in your neighbourhood, we have a process to consider introducing one.

A: Thanks for the heritage comments.  The City does have a set of heritage standards that regulate building style, exterior finish materials, windows, doors, steps, fences, and so on.  We also have guidelines for the Battery neighbourhood and for Quidi Vidi Village.

Our older buildings serve as a guide for new buildings and development, and can provide context for each street.  We also have to figure out how to shape modern buildings.  Some developments seek to mimic the older styles or take inspiration from them so that they fit in seamlessly to older streets and neighbourhoods.  Other developments seek to be completely modern, with the reasoning that a new building should be “of its time” and not copy the last.  We still have to resolve this tension in the heritage areas.

Any examples you have would be welcome. You can email your examples to the Chief Municipal Planner if you would like.

A: The buildings and land are currently under provincial jurisdiction. While the City encourages the redevelopment of this site it has no authority in this matter.

A: Our open house was promoted though our regular communications channels, including city website, Facebook  and other social media channels as well as traditional media such as the City's weekly ad in The Telegam etc. We typically don't use the engagestjohns.ca platform as a promotional tool. However, we are currently undertaking an evaluation of our engagement policy and process and this could change in the future. Please take a few minutes to complete the evaluation.　　

The Draft Development Regulations page does have the opportunity for residents to provide input. And we're working on having the presentation from the sessions added to the page. Also the draft regulations are posted on the page. 　

If you have any questions from either document post them on the page and someone will get back to you with a reply. 　　

The Policy is on the City's website stjohns.ca.  If you require further information about the Policy please email engage@stjohns.ca and we will forward your request on to our Department of Planning, Engineering & Regulatory Services.