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Keep Collingwood, Collingwood.

READ
THE
PLANS.

Three things in one place: what is being dug up on your street, where the big projects actually stand, and a search of the Town’s own planning papers. Every fact here links back to the page it came from, in the Town’s words, so you can check it yourself.

Read this first. This is my campaign’s tool, not the Town’s, and it is not legal advice. The two “sides” below are meant to be one-sided — that is the point of them. Short summaries can be wrong or out of date. Before you rely on anything here, click through and read the real page it came from.
LOOK IT UP YOURSELF

Find the
passage.

Type a word and see every place it shows up in the Town’s papers. If you type “sewer” it will also find “wastewater”, because they mean the same thing. It only shows you what the papers actually say. It never makes anything up.

BIG QUESTIONS PEOPLE ASK

Three questions
the documents
already answer.

I wrote these three by hand, straight out of the papers — no computer wrote them. The box above searches all 2,158 bits of those papers.

1. Homes and water2. Downtown height3. Land for jobs

How tall should downtown be?

What the Town’s own papers say

  • Most downtown heritage district lots are zoned C1, which allows up to 12 m, about 3 to 4 storeys Downtown Plan p.26.2 Downtown Plan p.26.
  • The new Official Plan says the general maximum height is 6 storeys or 20 m, with step-backs above the 3rd storey on key streets Official Plan p.89.1.
  • The Downtown Master Plan says there are "conflicting opinions on growth and height", plus too little affordable housing downtown and a weak link between downtown and the waterfront Downtown Plan p.14.
  • Its first action item is a study of where more height could work downtown, with a heritage architect on the team Downtown Plan p.26 Downtown Plan p.26.2.

People who want to build more say

The plan already allows 6 storeys, but the zoning still says 12 m. That gap scares off builders. Fix the zoning so apartments above shops can be built downtown, near jobs and transit.

People who want to go slower say

Downtown is a heritage district, and that is why people come. Height should follow the heritage study, protect views like the one to Town Hall, and use step-backs so the street still feels low Downtown Plan p.26.2 Official Plan p.89.1.

A fair way through

Both sides agree the rules don't match each other right now.

  • Commercial / mixed use: Finish the downtown height study first. Then update zoning so it matches the plan. Keep 3 storeys at the street, with taller parts stepped back.
  • Residential: Allow homes above shops, so there are more downtown homes without tearing down heritage buildings.
  • Industrial: No change needed.
  • Still unknown: The study's timeline and results. (Not in our sources.)

The Build and Protect columns are arguments. The cited sentences above are the part that comes from a document.

ASK A QUESTION

Ask it
like you would
ask a neighbour.

Type a question in your own words. You get three answers: someone arguing to build more, someone arguing to go slower, and then a plain summary of what makes sense — split into homes, shops and jobs. Every fact links back to the page it came from.

One question goes to three readers of the same passages: a case for building, a case for holding back, and a plain-language recommendation. It usually takes under a minute.

WHERE THIS COMES FROM

Where this comes from.

Town of Collingwood, Simcoe County and Province of Ontario public documents. Page numbers are PDF pages, not the number printed on the page. An excerpt is a short capture of a report whose full file could not be downloaded, and the link still goes to the original.

Show all 20 documents
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