According to city planning staff, minor changes to the application will offset concerns of over-intensification and loss of greenspace amenities.

But city councillors on the economic development and planning committee didn’t buy it, choosing to delay voting on official plan and zoning bylaw amendment applications to permit the buildings.

The Tuesday afternoon motion to defer the issue until the March 23 committee meeting to allow staff to answer a list of specific questions is the second delay. The motion passed 5-4.

City planning staff also supported the original application in September, when it did not have the gradual stepping up to 10 storeys for one of the buildings. At that time, committee members did not support the application, but in an effort to avoid a likely appeal of their denial to the Ontario Municipal Board, they handed it off to Dundas Councillor Russ Powers to try to negotiate an agreement.

But the alterations didn’t satisfy the community, or Powers.

“My concern from the first proposal until now is over-intensification of the site,” Powers said after the meeting, which he attended but did not have a vote because he isn’t on the committee.

Despite the slight alterations to the proposal, there was no change to the total number of units proposed and therefore the intensity of development stays the same.

City planning manager Jason Thompson wrote in his report a change to one of the proposed buildings, which was redesigned with a six-storey section and a 10-storey section, rather than one 10-storey section, will “reduce the scale and bulk of the building and provide transition from the built form of the existing six storey building.”

According to the staff report, the addition of roof-top gardens and a pathway with seating areas at grade level will provide landscaped area at about 80 per cent of the building footprint and therefore “offset(s) the loss of open area that would result from its development.”

Residents of Dundas did not agree with the planning staff conclusions.

The city received more than 120 letters from residents opposed to the development, including opposition from the Hamilton Naturalists Club and Governor’s Green Tenant Association.

At the first public meeting on the application in September, Lynda Lukasik of Environment Hamilton was one of several speakers who opposed the plan.

“A lot of thought has gone into where to pursue higher intensification,” Lukasik said, noting neither the former Town of Dundas nor the Hamilton Official Plan permit intensification at this site.

“This is the wrong place for intensification. There are appropriate places and you’ve identified them. You really need to stick to your plans.”

Councillors on the committee said the speakers at the fall meeting educated them on their own intensification and development policies.

But only Stoney Creek’s Brad Clark was fully prepared to reject the application immediately and encouraged the applicant to try an appeal to the OMB.

“With all these policies that we have in writing, it would be a very interesting hearing,” he said.

At the time, councilors appeared to share residents’ concerns about losing institutional property to residential development.

“That’s the best series of presentations from the public I’ve ever heard,” said ward one councilor Brian McHattie.

“We’ve all learned a lot today.”