The following article appeared in the October 10 edition of the Guelph Mercury:
Hilltop Road resident Nancy Alberton is glad Fusion Homes is scaling back the size of a planned retaining wall behind her house, but she’s still angry the city allowed the wall to be built at all.
Fusion Homes is building a townhouse development on property adjacent to Alberton’s backyard in the city’s north end. Last week, they started work on a 2.75- metre retaining wall that would be topped with a further 1.8 metres of privacy fence.
After Hilltop residents cried foul on the height of the wall, councillors Ian Findlay and Vicki Beard met with city staff and officials from Fusion Homes.
“We looked at it again and came up with a solution that everyone could live with,” said Larry Kotseff, vice-president at Fusion.
The grade and sloping levels of the backyards in the new development have been changed so the land tiers down toward Alberton’s yard. The wall will now be substantially smaller — about 0.6 metres high, with a fence on top of it. It was a decision that was made at “not an insignificant cost” Kotseff said.
“Fusion Homes went the extra mile, and they didn’t have to,” Alberton said. “They did that as a courtesy to us. But we never would have been in this situation if the city hadn’t dropped the ball.”
Scott Hannah, the city’s manager of development and parks planning, said staff is looking at a policy for retaining walls. There are currently no restrictions in place regulating the height of the walls. He said the property was approved for development in 2002, the same year the homes on Hilltop were approved.
“It’s pretty clear that this shouldn’t have been allowed to go as far as it did,” Findlay said. “There were bulldozers back there before we were brought in.”
He said staff is concerned about the issue and is bringing a policy forward quickly to address maximum heights on retaining walls.