Sarnia council gives research park more wiggle room with pending zoning change

A neighborhood plan for Sarnia’s Development Area 2 could include “noxious emissions” next door to new residential.

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Sarnia city council recently approved — pending an OK from the County of Lambton — where things such as roads and parks will go and the zoning for the 570-hectare area where Sarnia is expected to see much of its population growth in the coming years.

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But council made one change, for the Western Sarnia-Lambton Research Park, in the area’s secondary plan.

While it was recommended the research park lands be zoned for light industrial use, or “prestige employment” under the city bylaw, council opted unanimously to change the zoning to general employment, allowing heavy industrial operations.

“Not to insinuate it’s a large-scale heavy operation, but literally the language is around noxious use and direct pollution to the environment,” city community services general manager Stacey Forfar said about what the zoning would mean.

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Noxious use means “it’s emitting something from the site,” whether that’s odor or other things, she said.

Staff had recommended maintaining the existing light-industrial zoning, meaning the research park that provides space for companies to develop their technologies on a smaller scale, before “graduating” to other areas to build larger plants — the park has had success in growing companies locally — would have to apply to the city every time it needed an exemption, council heard.

This process generally takes about five months, Forfar said.

Often companies want to move faster than that when deciding whether or not to come to the park, said park executive director Katherine Albion.

“They do usually like to make the decisions very quickly,” she said.

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So, council approved the zoning change, to let the research park build typically shorter-term pilot operations as needed without going through the city rezoning or official plan amendment process.

There are always environmental permits involved, Albion said.

“Every time we do have a tenant here on site, we do go through the permitting process to make sure that we don’t have an impact on the area surrounding the park.”

Coun. Terry Burrell called for granting the research park heavy-industrial zoning.

“There may be times when they are doing something, in the process of getting the projects launched, that they may have to be incurring some of these requirements that are under the umbrella of the heavy industrial,” he said.

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“So, I think I’m going to put my trust in them that they are going to be responsible to the community in doing this.”

Albion said she’s grateful.

“It will provide us with flexibility into the future to drive toward achieving our mandate,” she said.

The official plan changes are pending County of Lambton approval and won’t take effect until after city council approves Sarnia’s new zoning bylaw, in the worksplanning manager Eric Hyatt said.

A zoning bylaw draft is expected to come to council at a public meeting in June, he said.

Meanwhile, an opinion from Ron Palmer of The Planning Partnership — which developed the $272,000 secondary plan for the city — notes the research park already has something on site considered a noxious use, but it’s about 400 meters north of Wellington Street, where the nearest planned residential and commercial building would happen in Development Area 2.

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Palmer called that distance an “adequate” buffer.

With council’s exemption though, if it’s approved by the county, the research park will be able to build toxic uses closer, Hyatt said.

“There hasn’t been any zoning change yet, but there is potential on that site for uses to perhaps encroach where there should be greater separation,” he said.

Albion said she couldn’t specify what the existing noxious use is at the research park, but said operations fall within permitted guidelines.

“We do have confidentiality agreements with all of our tenants and our permitting documentation is confidential,” she said.

Asked if the research park would maintain that 400-meter buffer zone, Albion said officials are “waiting for some additional information.

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“But we do understand that, with this designation, we are provided with some additional flexibility.”

More office space at the research park has been recently converted to research space — for research such as electrical vehicle battery, hybrid chemistry, environmental technologies and others — and the park is looking into the feasibility of building an industrial fermentation center to attract companies interested in piloting their fermentation technologies, she said.

That fermentation center, if it’s built, could go somewhere on research park property beside Highway 40, “but no final location has been decided,” Albion said.

“We’re still in the very early stages of engineering and feasibility determination.”

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Sarnia Mayor Mike Bradley, also chair of the research park’s board of directors, has said it’s important to find the right balance between the research park’s needs and attracting new housing in the city’s east.

“This is probably one of the most defining decisions council will make in this term,” he said last fall.

Most of the Area 2 secondary plan includes residential and commercial zoning, save for the northeast section where the research park and city business park lands exist.

Industrial lands also border the development area to the south, on the other side of Confederation Line.

Plans to expand industrial operations south of Confederation Line were withdrawn in 2022 after opposition from neighbors.

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