2551 Sherwood Heights Drive: Council sent Infrastructure Ontario's employment-land plan back to staff in 2024

What Council decided

On June 10, 2024, Oakville's Planning and Development Council declined to decide an official plan amendment for 2551 Sherwood Heights Drive and referred it back to staff. The applicant is Infrastructure Ontario, the provincial agency that manages government land. The file, OPA 1504.03, would redesignate the property in the Livable Oakville Plan from Parkway Belt to Business Employment "with an exception", in the words of the Town's notice.

The property, formerly numbered 50 Sherwood Heights Drive, is on the west side of Sherwood Heights Drive, southeast of the Queen Elizabeth Way and on the north side of Kingsway Drive, in Ward 3. The Town's records show the application was received on April 6, 2022, and the supporting studies on the Town's application page are dated April 2022. No other Planning Act application applied to the land when the notice was issued.

The meeting

Staff brought a recommendation report with a draft amendment, site-specific urban design guidelines and By-law 2024-091 to adopt the amendment. The applicant's planning consultant spoke first. More than 20 residents followed, along with the Joshua Creek Residents Association and the Clearview Oakville Community Alliance, and a petition was filed. The meeting was extended past 10:30 p.m. and recessed from 11:15 to 11:45 p.m. before Council voted. Three councillors were absent.

The by-law was not passed. Instead Council carried a motion referring the application, including the design guidelines, to staff to address 12 matters it had raised:

• amend the proposal to reduce the warehousing component, and review the definition of warehouse and "minor warehousing"
• review the disposition of the property and possible Town interest in the lands
• consider hours of operation for future uses, specifically 24/7 operations
• review how many buildings could be accommodated based on 7,000 square metres
• review the provincial D6 land-use compatibility guidelines, the area of influence, setbacks, and the classes of industrial use that could be considered
• review alternative uses, including office employment with exceptions, and whether there is potential for housing
• review the Town's biodiversity plan and clarify the environmental protection process
• review appropriate separation distances and building heights

Where it stands now

As of November 9, 2026, the Town's development data still lists the file at the public meeting stage, with no Council decision date, and the Town continues to list it among active development applications. No report responding to the referral, and no further item on the file, appears in Council or Planning and Development Council minutes published through that date. No appeal for the address or file number appears in the Ontario Land Tribunal's case status service.

The planning framework around the file has shifted since the referral. On January 19, 2026, Council adopted Official Plan Amendment 74, which gives land under the provincial Parkway Belt West Plan local designations in the Livable Oakville Plan, and the Province revoked the Parkway Belt West Plan effective July 1, 2026. The records read for this story do not say which designation the amendment gave this property, or whether Infrastructure Ontario's application will be revised as a result.

The staff report and the draft amendment were not available to read for this record, so the size of the site, the nature of the exception and what Infrastructure Ontario intended to build or sell are not stated here. Council's motion indicates that warehousing was part of what the amendment would have allowed.