Lambton County proposes four-storey affordable housing project on former Cathcart Boulevard church site

Sarnia City Council will vote on critical Official Plan and zoning amendments to clear the way for a 94-unit affordable apartment building on Cathcart Boulevard. The community-led infill project seeks to maximize urban land efficiency on full municipal services while integrating with an existing senior citizen residential complex.

Sarnia City Council will consider combined Official Plan and Zoning By-law Amendment applications at its June 22, 2026, public meeting to permit construction of a four-storey, 94-unit affordable housing apartment building at 700-718 Cathcart Blvd.

The applications, submitted by B.M. Ross & Associates Limited on behalf of the Corporation of the County of Lambton, seek to redevelop the vacant institutional property that formerly housed St. Bartholomew’s Anglican Church.

The targeted infill development would introduce 94 purpose-built affordable rental units to the built-up area, directly advancing the municipality’s long-term target of ensuring 30 per cent of all new residential construction is affordable by 2046.

The subject lands already contain Jubilee Gardens, a lawfully existing two-storey multiple dwelling that has provided 42 senior citizen apartment units on the western portion of the property since April 1975.

The County of Lambton purchased the adjacent vacant church lot in April 2025 and merged the two parcels to create a unified 13,551-square-metre site with 95.4 metres of continuous frontage along Cathcart Boulevard.

Official Plan Amendment No. 15 proposes to redesignate the lands from Mixed Use Corridor I to Mixed Use Corridor II to accommodate an entirely residential mid-rise structure.

The requested policy adjustment would eliminate the rigid commercial development mandates of the previous designation, which strictly required all new buildings to dedicate at least 50 per cent of their ground-floor space to active non-residential uses.

Zoning By-law Amendment 01-2026 seeks to transition the property from its split Urban Residential 1 and site-specific Urban Residential 5-19 zones into a single, comprehensive site-specific category.

The amendment would establish specialized performance regulations, including reducing the site-wide parking rate to 0.58 spaces per unit to establish a total of 79 grade-level stalls shared between both residential buildings.

A comprehensive Parking and Transportation Impact Study submitted by Salvini Consulting Inc. justified the lower parking standard by tracking six regional rent-geared-to-income housing complexes, which demonstrated an actual peak parking demand of only 0.25 spaces per unit.

The proposed structural layout runs parallel to Cathcart Boulevard to create a consistent streetscape backdrop while using the building’s massing to screen the parking area from nearby low-density residential lots.

To ensure a compatible built-form transition with the single-detached family homes located directly to the north and east, the county has expanded its side yard buffer to 8.0 metres and its rear yard depth to 14.0 metres.

Municipal planning staff have strongly recommended approval of the development, noting that the project represents an efficient use of land on full municipal services within an identified strategic growth area.

If council adopts the implementing by-laws, the development will progress to the formal site plan approval stage to finalize municipal sanitary sewer connections, stormwater management grading plans, and emergency vehicle access routes.