Park View Homes presents Merrickville Grove to council

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Parkview Homes presented the plans for their new subdivision in Merrickville to council last Monday evening.

As mentioned in a previous article in the North Grenville Times, Merrickville Grove will be a new 98-home subdivision in the heart of Merrickville. The plan is to hook up to Merrickville’s water and sewer system and integrate the new homes as much as possible into the old village. “The design objective is to respect the heritage features of the village,” said President of Park View Homes Andrew Cinnamon at the meeting.

The subdivision is still in the beginning phases of the approval process. The application for the plan of a subdivision has been submitted to the United Counties of Leeds and Grenville, and once they deem it complete, that will spark more consultation with the Village and the public.

Park View Homes has been a member of the Merrickville-Wolford community for eight years and have built many of the homes in Merrickville Estates. Councillor Timothy Molloy noted that although they have experience building in the Municipality, developing lots in the urban area of Merrickville is a lot different than on the over two-acre lots in Merrickville Estates. “Have you opened up to comments from people who live in the village?” he asked. “There is a large group of people who are not enamoured by it.”

Andrew said that he and the Park View Homes team are open to input from villagers and have already made an effort to reach out to them. They also seemed open to an idea from council to create a forum on their website to promote more discussion and public input. “That could be part of your process outside the official planning process,” Mayor Doug Struthers said.

Councillor Molloy also suggested that Park View Homes look at putting laneways and garages behind the houses so they would blend in better with older homes in the village which were built closer to the road. “It could be quite a nice feature of the Grove,” he said. While Andrew said they would take the suggestion into consideration, he is not sure how it would work practically for the plan of the subdivision.

Affordability is also an important selling feature for Merrickville Grove. Although Andrew says the end price is still a moving target, they estimate that the townhomes will be listed somewhere in the range of $288,000 to $300,000.

Resident Dawn Dawson approached council during the public question period because she was concerned that there would not be enough capacity in the Municipality’s water treatment system to handle the new homes. Council assured her that the capacity that has been calculated for the system takes into account all the lots available to be developed in Merrickville, and therefore can more than handle the new homes. In fact, Mayor Struthers confirmed that with these new houses hooking up to the water treatment facility, residents might see a decrease in their water rates.

The plans for Merrickville Grove are still in the concept stage and council and the public will have the opportunity to provide more input before it is finalized. “Thank you very much for giving us an overview of the concept,” Mayor Struthers said.

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