In a special meeting of Norfolk County Council, councilors made short work of going against a staff recommendation to give the go-ahead for a small Port Dover home to be demolished and rebuilt in a larger size.
The current building at 106 Brown St. in Dover, sits in a ‘hazard land zone’, backing onto Lake Erie just east of the town.
No one from the public came forward to speak out against a plan to take down the old home and build a larger one.
The Long Point Region Conservation Authority (LPRCA) said it could approve the plans with a couple of precautions in place.
And staff said the new building plan wasn’t out of character for the area, which already has similarly sized homes.
But planner Fabian Serra said the Norfolk staff was recommending council refuse to amend a bylaw to allow the house.
“This proposal size is significantly larger (than the existing house),” he said.
“Our professional opinion is that it does not meet with the bylaw and we recommend refusal.”
One reason was that the new house would be much larger due to the addition of a second storey and a basement to the plan.
County staff counts all that space when looking at the size of the house so, on paper, the house looked like it was growing from 68.3 to 237 square meters.
The LPRCA, which doesn’t count basements, said the new house could be larger but couldn’t be closer to the shoreline bluffs than the old building.
With little discussion during the Sept. 6 meeting, council approved amending the bylaw to approve the new build.
Coun. Chris Van Passen made a plea for all the entities involved in planning to get on the same page when it comes to sizing homes.
“My pet peeve for years is we’ve gotta do something sooner or later because the building department, planning department, fire department and LPCRA all use different criteria about how big a house is.”
@EXPSGamble