The proposed expansion of Ren’s Pet Depot still holds a few unanswered questions for Puslinch councillors.
On Nov. 21 council discussed the Nov. 1 meeting summary regarding Ren’s Pet Depot’s proposed official plan amendment and zoning bylaw application for a planned warehouse expansion.
A meeting was held on Nov. 1 with county, township and GRCA staff with regard to the application.
Councillor Wayne Stokley questioned part of the report which indicated there was no need for an environmental impact study and a noise study would not be needed either.
Stokley said “one thing I found a little disturbing was that currently there was a 30-metre setback for the NE [Natural Environment] zone and they wanted to shorten that to 20 metres. But they did not indicate why they wanted to do that.”
He asked if the intent was to move the building closer to the creek.
Mayor Dennis Lever said a number of changes were being proposed, including reconfiguring the layout of the building to try to make it fit better within the available amount of land there.
“There are still some constraints with things they have to work through.”
He said part of that was to try to address some of the noise issues by blocking direct noise path from the trucks to local residences.
Lever said those notes were simply a summary of the meeting.
“It still has to come back to the planning committee.”
Stokley maintained a concern that if the proposal involved relocations of parts of the building to address the noise, but state noise studies are not needed seemed to be contradictory.
“They are saying that, we haven’t,” Lever clarified.
Councillor Susan Fielding agreed.
She said the meeting summary notes were provided by MHBC Planning, Urban Design & Landscape Architecture.
“While it was nice of them to provide the notes, they are not our consultants.”
Fielding said she would like to get the opinions of the township consultants as it comes back to the planning advisory committee.
Lever agreed that this was a meeting with the consultants to look at overcoming technical issues.
