The Mayor for Ritchot says rezoning land within the Tourond Creek development should stimulate residential growth in St. Adolphe.

Council has voted 3-1 in favour of rezoning land from Commercial to Residential General. Chris Ewen says this is to accommodate multi-family housing.

(Ritchot Mayor Chris Ewen)Ewen says the developer plans to put up between 90 and 100 units, which could help grow St. Adolphe by up to 300 people over the next couple of years. He notes interestingly enough, this is a very similar plan to the one that was voted down a year ago. Ewen explains about 100 people showed up to that public hearing last year, with most of the crowd not supporting the proposal. Fast forward a year, and Ewen says between 30 and 40 people showed up at the public hearing with about half the crowd in support.

"As we saw over the year, no commercial development has really happened," says Ewen. "I think people started to take notice of that and wonder if there is something else we could be doing to grow St. Adolphe to get commercial in later."

In fact, Ewen says some of the residents who spoke against the plan a year ago, have since changed their opinion.

The lone dissenting vote this time around came from the Mayor himself.

"My vote wasn't against the multi-family or changing it from Commercial to Residential because I do feel Commercial is quite slow in St. Adolphe," explains Ewen. "I just really wanted to see council go back to the table and see if we could do a swap or a trade to move that Commercial somewhere else."

According to Ewen, the Tourond Creek development already does contain land that could be used for multi-family. However, it is designated to the Seine River School Division. He notes if they want to build another school, that is where it will go. If a school is not built there, it can be used for multi-family housing, though that is several phases down the road.

"Really, this would be the first large multi-family project in St. Adolphe anywhere to be honest," he admits.

Ewen says Tourond Creek today has about 39 houses, with four of them being spec homes.