Take a look! Draft Policies on Major Transit Station Areas and Regional Employment Areas

We have just posted some proposed draft policies on Major Transit Station Areas (MTSA) and proposed draft policies on Regional Employment Areas (REA) that will, after further revisions, consultation, and feedback, be incorporated into our Regional Official Plan (ROP).

MTSAs are generally defined as 500m to 800m around a Rapid Transit stop. They are areas intended to accommodate higher density, mixed-use, transit-supportive neighbourhoods that support access to local amenities, jobs and housing.

REAs are areas protected in the ROP for clusters of businesses and economic activities, such as manufacturing, warehouses and some offices (e.g., RT Park in Waterloo, East Side Lands in North Cambridge, Highway 401/97 are in North Dumfries). In order to support the forecasted job growth to the year 2051, and support the creation of complete communities, it's important that the Region identifies and protects the right supply of employment lands, at the right time, in a variety of rural and urban locations.

These draft policies are a first attempt at how we see the policies being included into the ROP, but we want your thoughts on if you think we're on the right track, if you think we should make some revisions, or if you think we need to go in another direction.

We also have some MTSA virtual display boards and REA virtual display boards that we hope will provide you with some context on what these policies do, why we need to include them in the ROP, and some history regarding how the endorsed boundaries were created. A .pdf version of the MTSA virtual display boards and REA virtual display boards are also available to the right, in the Document Library.

If you'd like to chat with regional staff about any of the draft policies, or if you have any questions about the process going forward, please feel free to reach out to us at regionalofficialplanreview@regionofwaterloo.ca and we would be happy to set up a virtual meeting time. Or if you would like to submit any specific thoughts or comments on the proposed draft MTSA policies or draft REA policies, please take a few minutes to complete the MTSA comment form or the REA comment form.