Centre Wellington council is extending its contract with Meridian Planning Consultants of Vaughan to develop a community improvement plan (CIP) and urban design guidelines at a fixed price of $24,500 plus HST.
Those guidelines will set out design principles with respect to heritage restoration, facade improvements, streetscapes, property access, signage and open spaces.
They will also serve as eligibility criteria for financial incentive programs.
The design guidelines capital project was established through the Heritage Committee in 2012 in order to provide a tool to be used in the evaluation of applications for funding under the downtown CIP being developed at the time.
With the downtown and brownfield CIP project initiated in 2013, one of the comments that came up during the first round of stakeholder consultations was the need to proceed with the design guidelines.
As a result, the consultant has offered the opportunity to complete design guidelines to augment the CIP at a significant cost savings (over the cost if of the guidelines as a separate project) by combining project team meetings and stakeholder consultations.
The total cost to the township is $24,931, inclusive of the non-refundable portion of the HST ($24,500 plus 1.76%), which is within the approved capital budget of $25,000.
Mayor Joanne Ross-Zuj said coming back to this matter is “really important to the municipal CIP and the local heritage guidelines.”
She added, “It’s pretty significant when you think about how you want your downtowns to look.”
Councillor Kelly Linton commented that he was pleased to see this matter come forward.
“I think this is important for the heritage committee that we move forward on this – having heritage design guidelines fit into the bigger picture.”
Linton was further pleased to see this “hard-wired” into the CIP process.
