Rezoning recognizes garage business across from school

By Craig Westcott

CBS council has given final approval to an amendment affecting land across from Villanova Junior High in Manuels that tidies up the zoning on a garage and used car sales business that was straddling two residential planning zones.
The 1.1-acre parcel is located at 2703 and 2707 Topsail Road.
The applicant, HQ Automotive Repair Shop, applied to council to change the two zones that divided the property – Residential Mixed on one portion and Residential Medium Density on the other – to Commercial General. The change enables council to recognize the use of 2707 Topsail Road as a garage and allows the applicant to expand the parking lot and convert a house on the property into a storage building.
After receiving the application this past winter, council sent it to the provincial government for comment, then hired a commissioner to look into the zoning implications and hold a public hearing. Only one comment was received after the application was advertised and another was submitted for the public hearing. Both opposed the application. The identities of the commenters were redacted in the planning notes sent to council but from the tenor of the remarks they may have come from the same person.
“You need to look at it,” read the first comment in an e-mail to council. “Looks like a state. It’s eventually going to look like a junk yard in the middle of town.”
The second commenter “totally disagreed” with the application and outlined the reasons why in an accompanying letter. “It was only supposed to be a small car lot,” said the commenter. “Then it turned into a wash way. Then into a garage extension after extension (all the nice trees gone).”
The commenter listed other complaints about the nature of a garage, the busy traffic in the area and urged council to “shut it down.”
Meanwhile, nobody attended the public hearing to lodge a complaint or oppose the application in person.
The planning notes prepared for council indicate the Town had approved nonconforming uses at the property in the past for previous owners, acknowledged that the land has been used for commercial purposes for many years, and that the new amendment and zoning is a reasonable consideration “to reflect those uses.”
It fell to councillor-at-large Rex Hillier, as a member of the planning committee, to put that consideration before council for final approval.
“This is a rezoning project that we have been working through for some time,” Hillier noted. “We’ve worked this through the (review) process, it’s gone through the Province… and now we’re finding it fair to put the stamp (of approval) on it.”
Mayor Darrin Bent agreed. “All the hoops have been jumped through, all the Is dotted and the Ts crossed,” he said, before calling the vote which saw council approve the amendment unanimously.