Change foreseen for Westmount's demolition permits process

During city council's monthly public meeting last night, Councillor Cynthia Lulham, who chairs the demolition and planning advisory committees, outlined this and other impending modifications that could affect how the demolition committee functions.

Lulham said the Westmount Municipal Association had questioned city council last year about the demolition committee and its membership. "So we are looking at the constitution of our demolition committee, and we're also looking at our demolition bylaw," she said.

"Right now, it is established that when you apply for a demolition, you provide the plans for the house you're going to be building. This can be costly for somebody to go to great extents to prepare all the plans to build the replacement house, only to be turned down at the demolition.

"Otherwise also we find that in many instances people will do major renovations that don't constitute a demolition, but greatly change the house and the neighbours have no input. So we're looking to see what we can do with our current laws and within the Cities and Towns Act to amend those two so that we can have more public input at both ends."

Lulham said that two round-table sessions held with building and landscape architects by the urban planning committee last year brought in lots of input and good ideas. As a result, the committee will be holding another round-table session with urban planners this year.

Projects the urban planning committee have been working on lately include a program held in the fall to educate residents on the importance of local heritage preservation.

"We've working on the schedule for next year, and one of the areas we will be looking at is sustainable development," said Lulham. "The other major areas we're looking at are rock excavation and maximum floor area ratios, or maximum house sizes, or how you fit into the streetscape so that we don't end up with McMansions or mega-houses — however you want to call them.

"But it has become an issue, as we're finding there's more and more demand to make homes bigger and bigger," she added. "So we've been examining how they fit into a streetscape, how we create rules that would meet the desires of our citizens and at the same time respect our built community."