Council approved 48 homes and a mixed-use building at Garden Drive and Lakeshore Road West

What Council decided

On June 16, 2025, Oakville's Planning and Development Council approved three applications by Garden Residences Corporation for 105 and 115 to 159 Garden Drive, the northeast corner of Garden Drive and Lakeshore Road West in Ward 2. By-law 2025-095 adopted Official Plan Amendment 71, By-law 2025-096 amended the zoning, and Council authorized the Director of Planning and Development to grant draft approval to a plan of subdivision (file 24T-25001/1617), subject to conditions. The motion was moved by Councillor Duddeck and seconded by Councillor Chisholm.

What was approved

The proposal is three blocks of four-storey back-to-back townhouses with rooftop amenity space, plus a mixed-use building along Lakeshore Road West, for 48 homes and about 170 square metres of ground-floor commercial space. The Town's notice of passing counts 76 parking spaces, 59 of them in at-grade garages beneath the townhouse blocks and 17 of them stacked, along with 11 surface spaces behind the mixed-use building, six reserved for shop customers and visitors. The subdivision application exists for a narrow reason: the land was not a block on a registered plan, and one is needed for the project to proceed as a common element condominium.

The lands are in the Kerr Village growth area of the Livable Oakville Plan, in a Main Street 1 strip on the north side of Lakeshore between Dorval Drive and Maurice Drive where the plan limits buildings to four storeys. As amended, the plan permits multiple attached dwellings and one apartment building on the Garden Drive block, to a maximum of 48 homes, and requires at least 155 square metres of publicly accessible retail or service space on the ground floor facing Lakeshore Road West.

How the plan changed

Parking was the issue from the start. When the application went to its statutory public meeting on October 15, 2024, it showed 48 resident spaces and 11 for shops and visitors. A representative of neighbouring property owners opposed it, citing a parking shortage and the lift-based parking then proposed. Council asked staff to report back on the parking supply and how cars would manoeuvre, the bedroom mix (every home was then a three-bedroom), waste collection and green building standards. By the June 2025 notice the parking count had risen to 76 and the commercial space had been trimmed from about 194 square metres to about 170.

The block has been through the process before. The Town's planning layer lists closed files from 2020 and 2021 for a retirement residence on the same land, with 100 independent-living and 32 assisted-living units, and the site's zoning provision dates from a 2022 by-law that cites an Ontario Land Tribunal case number.

Where it stands now

The appeal period ended July 21, 2025. A search of the Tribunal's case-status database on November 9, 2026 found no appeal of the 2025 approvals, and the Town's consolidated Official Plan lists Amendment 71 as in effect on July 25, 2025. On the same date the Town's planning layer showed the Official Plan and zoning files at Council Approval, with 48 homes approved, and both the subdivision and the site plan application (file 1617.058/02, received April 24, 2025) as In Circulation, meaning still under staff review. Construction cannot start until those are cleared.