Oakville created the Neyagawa Urban Core on March 3, 2025, a growth area with heights of up to 12 to 18 storeys

What Council adopted

On March 3, 2025, Oakville's Planning and Development Council adopted two Town-initiated official plan amendments that create the Neyagawa Urban Core, a new strategic growth area at Neyagawa Boulevard and Burnhamthorpe Road West in Ward 7, immediately south of Highway 407. The vote on By-law 2025-005 was 12 to 3, with Councillors Adams, Nanda and Xie opposed.

Official Plan Amendment 326 changes the North Oakville East Secondary Plan, part of the Town's 1984 Official Plan. According to the Town's notice of passing, it designates the land as the Neyagawa Urban Core Area and adds policies for a transit-supportive community with a mix of high-density residential, commercial and institutional uses, maximum building heights of between 12 and 18 storeys, and minimum heights and densities. It also adds policies on urban design, transportation, stormwater and the public realm. Official Plan Amendment 45 marks the same area as one of the Town's Nodes and Corridors on the urban structure map of the Livable Oakville Plan.

Why here

The Town's study page ties the designation to a future 407 Transitway station at Neyagawa Boulevard. The study area covers about 75 hectares and takes in an existing neighbourhood and King's Christian Collegiate as well as land expected to redevelop. Council's motion sent the staff report to the Ministry of Transportation, Halton Region, the Town of Milton and the landowners' group NOCBI to support building that station. The Tribunal's 2026 decision records that the Ministry told the Town in May 2025 that a station at Neyagawa is not warranted; the transitway lands remain in the plan.

The review took more than three years. Staff introduced it in October 2021 and held a public information meeting in February 2022. A first pair of draft amendments, with a 12-storey maximum, went to a statutory public meeting on May 16, 2022. Updated drafts, with the 12-to-18-storey range, went to a second statutory public meeting on November 25, 2024.

The applications it touches

The notice names three private files on the same land. Two were decided in part in December 2024: Council passed zoning for the subdivisions at 382 Burnhamthorpe Road West and at 210 and 374 Burnhamthorpe Road West but held back parts of each, and for the second it deferred the remainder expressly to this review. The third, Argo Neyagawa Corporation's proposal at 505 Burnhamthorpe Road West, was already before the Ontario Land Tribunal. A further application, for 898 homes at Neyagawa Boulevard and William Halton Parkway, was filed in November 2025.

The appeal, and where it stands

The amendments did not take effect unchallenged. Four landowners appealed them: 1816985 Ontario Inc., Argo Neyagawa Corporation, Burnhamthorpe/Oakville Holdings Inc. and Sherborne Lodge Developments Limited and others. The Tribunal heard that appeal, case OLT-25-000339, together with Argo Neyagawa's own appeals, led by case OLT-24-000968, over 11 days in February 2026, after some of the parties had settled with the Town in full or in part. On April 7, 2025, Council authorized staff to try to settle the Argo Neyagawa appeal in line with the policy direction of OPAs 326 and 45 and otherwise to oppose it. On November 17, 2025, it gave the same direction for both appeals.

In a decision issued April 24, 2026, the Tribunal allowed the appeals in part and approved the amendments in principle, with changes. It set an overall minimum density of 160 residents and jobs per hectare for the urban core, required buildings of at least five storeys within 30 metres of the north side of Burnhamthorpe Road West and William Halton Parkway and along Neyagawa Boulevard north of it, and permitted up to 20 storeys north of the parkway. It withheld its final order until the Town filed the amendment in final form.

When checked on November 9, 2026, the Tribunal's case status service listed a further decision dated July 14, 2026 and showed both cases as closed. That document could not be retrieved that day, so this record does not give the final wording of the amendments. The Town has kept planning for the area: on June 22, 2026, Council added $120,000 to the capital budget for studies of a transit terminal in the Neyagawa Urban Core.