In an effort to get more housing built in Greater Sudbury, a proposal has been submitted to allow for residential infill lots to carry multi-unit residential buildings with as many as 10 units.
Parking would be accommodated on the street or in neighbourhood parking lots.
“It’s a simple approach to meeting housing needs that allows for a diversity in housing in the neighbourhoods that people really love to live in,” principal architect Rosaline Hill told city council members last month.
Hill is part of the BuildingIN team which submitted a proposal to see the city allow a new kind of residential infill development which could gradually fill out residential lots throughout the city over the course of decades.
“You wouldn’t see dramatic change in a neighbourhood if you were to institute a new infill program because it happens incrementally and spreads out through a neighbourhood,” she said.
The BuildingIN team was invited by city council to undertake a study, including public consultation to help “solve their housing supply crisis through multi-unit low-rise infill that works at scale to meet their housing targets,” according to a past municipal report.
The organization works with municipalities to help identify business models for multi-unit infill housing as well as identify areas these models could apply.
In their incremental approach, empty lots in existing neighbourhoods, or lots made empty after older housing stock is demolished, would be developed as low-rise multi-unit residential buildings.
The city’s existing 11-metre height limit would remain in place alongside similar setbacks, but with up to 10 units per building.
“Smaller lots certainly wouldn’t be able to fit that many units, so the number of units would adjust with the size of the lot,” Hill said.
“These are not apartment-style units, these are all stacked townhouse or rowhouse kind of combinations of units where everybody has their own door,” she said. “This allows people to feel more connected to their community.”
Combining so many units with parking areas becomes complicated when it comes to such things as managing stormwater, she said, adding, “We want developers to be attracted to build the kind of housing Sudbury needs, and combining parking on site doesn’t work very well.”
As such, street permit parking and neighbourhood parking lots are potential options to accommodate vehicles.
These parking lots would be on small lots, Hill said; “Not on corners, corners are more visually exposed and we don’t want a neighbourhood to look like parking.”
This type of development is proposed in low-rise zones, within 400 metres of corridors, in older pre-1980s neighbourhoods outside of flood plains or shorelines where the average house value is equal to or under $400,000.
When it comes to building out (sprawl) and up (taller residential buildings), Hill described building in as “a sweet spot and an area of opportunity because it’s a kind of growth that’s the most affordable to build.”
Smaller-unit buildings are cheaper to build, heat, cool and maintain, and Hill said tapping into existing infrastructure is “a great fiscal choice for municipalities.”
From BuildingIN’s mapping of Greater Sudbury, she said the city is on track to seeing 9,734 residential infill units built by 2051 under a building-as-usual model, where they have a top-end potential for 18,241 units following a BuildingIN model.
Exactly what this model might mean for Greater Sudbury will be hashed out in a report to city council members which staff have been asked to present by mid-2026.
During a planning committee meeting last month, members expressed some concerns.
Permit street parking was flagged by Ward 4 Coun. Paulin Fortin as a potential issue given the necessity for snow clearing, arguing, “It all looks great on paper, but going forward and how that fits here in Sudbury with the amount of snow we have just logistically doesn’t sound feasible.”
Narrower streets were eliminated from the BuildingIN maps for this reason, Hill said, and further analysis by city staff might disqualify even more streets. Parking would only be allowed on one side of the street.
Last year, city council OK’d a fourth unit per residential lot as-of-right, meaning they’re allowed without the need for rezoning, as long as they meet other requirements such as building code.
The city has an immediate need for 500 rental units, city senior planner Melissa Riou said last month, with an additional 112 units needed each year for the next 30 years in order to hit a healthy vacancy rate of five per cent.
Tyler Clarke covers city hall and political affairs for Sudbury.com.