It was a big meeting for big projects at the March planning meeting for Guelph City Council this week. From a proposed tower on the downtown core to the zoning for the Guelph Innovation District, these were perhaps the two biggest files that council has seen in the last couple of months. But bigger than any individual housing project is the entirety of the housing file, and council got an update on that too. Let’s review what went down in the meeting in this recap!
Planning Meeting of City Council – March 10, 2026
Once again, council had to stop their closed meeting to start the open meeting, so education about “Land Use Planning and Legal Consideration” had to wait in order for council to make some planning decisions.
First, council approved two new heritage designations, but one of them required Councillor Leanne Caron to sit out the final decision because the house was actually owned by one of her family members.
Then it was on to the first of two big public meetings starting with the official plan amendment and zoning bylaw application for 70 Fountain Street East. The project proposes a 24-storey, mixed-use building with ground-floor retail space, five stacked townhouse-style in the four-storey podium at the lower and upper ground floors and a residential tower above containing 419 purpose-built rental dwelling units. Now this isn’t the first time that someone proposed building a tower on this site. An application brought to council in 2020 was met with many delegates who protested the project, but there was a notable lack of objection to the idea this time.
The team from Fitzrovia Residential Inc. – who are looking to build, own and operate the tower with the intention of using it as a student residence, or as a place were young professionals can live – delegated to council about their experience with such buildings and its appeal in the heart of downtown. Three other delegates also spoke in favour of the project despite any individual concerns because it will bring a lot of people into the core at a time when they will be desperately needed to revitalize the area.
Council had some questions about the massing and understanding what the building will look like at ground level when you’re standing next to it, and there were also some questions about whether there was enough demand for student housing with a big question mark now over Conestoga’s downtown campus. The team was also asked about the local demands for family type units, and Fitzrovia’s Chris van de Water explained that they’re looking at making 35 per cent of the units two- and three-bedroom units, with those big units being between 1,000 and 1,200 square feet in size.
Mayor Cam Guthrie called it a “Christmas miracle” that there was a development application where all the delegations were positive and said that this developer has a reputation for getting approvals and building, and that he hopes this is the case here. For the record, van de Water said that they are expecting to close the deal to buy the property in the third quarter of 2027 and hope to have all the planning docs in line to start building shortly there after. Council received the report unanimously.
The second public meeting was for 328 Victoria Road South and 588 Stone Road East, aka blocks one and two for the Fusion Homes development on the Guelph Innovation District property. Last fall, council approved the block plan, and this incorporated the approved revisions from that meeting and then turned the blocks into all the various zoning for neighbourhoods, commercials nodes, and parkland. Aside from the planner on behalf of the project, and a member of Guelph Trail User-groups Coalition, there wasn’t much left to add about this file, and it was also unanimously received by council.
The last big item was the Housing in Guelph 2025 Report. This comprehensive presentation laid out all the work that City of Guelph staff have been doing on housing over the last few years, and the big challenges that still exist, preventing more from being done. There was a lot of information about the workload needed to create the conditions to build more housing, how building permits were up in 2025 even through they were mostly for apartments, multi-residential units and ADUs, and how the City is trying to undo even more barriers and red tape.
Councillors asked about developing more social housing, creating more housing for seniors specifically, and advocacy to the provincial government. Council got bogged down on that last point when Councillor Caron proposed a motion to send a letter to the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing asking for a two-year moratorium on further changes to provincial planning policy and legislation. While many of her colleagues liked the idea, there was some concern that the letter as proposed would paint with too broad a brush; what if the provincial government proposed a change that might have a positive impact? Caron eventually withdrew the motion, but Guthrie said that council could leave the door open to making a more targeted statement in the future.
Just before approving the bylaws, Guthrie remembered that he had a motion of his own. In terms of taking down more barriers locally, council tabled a motion to direct staff to look at re-establishing the Brownfield Community Improvement Plan where in the City offers incentives to clean up brownfield sites and turn them into active properties again. The motion was unanimously approved.
Council met in-camera for another 20 minutes before rising for the day.
Click here to see the complete recap of the meeting.
Guelph Politico 