Shelburne, Ontario

SHELBURNE , ONTAR IO in Melanchthon. The council is also focusing on revamping roadways. As part of the town’s Transportation Master Plan starting this year, the council is investing in making roadways easy to share among cyclists, pedestrians, and cars. Improving trucking routes, bypasses, and development accesses is also on the agenda. In particular, the town plans to reroute the heavy truck traffic downtown using the provincial highway corridor. This flow of traffic change will happen alongside the revitalization of Shelburne’s mixed-use downtown. The town’s Official Plan and Community Improvement Plan intend to redevelop the locale and enhance its amenities. In line with its Parks and Recreation Master Plan, now underway, town council will open new parks and determine what facilities each of them will have. This includes a re-evaluation of the popular Fiddle Park. The park, known for holding Shelburne’s nationally renowned Heritage Music subdivisions are proposed nearby with 200-300 units on the north and south sides of Highway 89. Meanwhile, Flato Developments applied to construct a 93-unit senior citizen apartment building on the north side of Highway 89 and plans to develop several hundred units on another 100 acres. Maramel Homes’ small Shelburne Towns development is under construction nearby at the west end of First and Second Avenues. Updating the community’s infrastructure has been a priority as the population numbers keep increasing. The six-square-kilometer town will build on the remaining land in Shelburne’s urban boundary. The next phases of this growth are planned over the next 10-20 years, as part of the Town’s Official Plan updated in 2017. The expansion will be part of Dufferin County’s own land needs assessment for growth in its 30-year plan. “What we anticipate is that the remaining land within Shelburne’s municipal boundary, all of the west side land in particular, will be needed for Shelburne’s growth locally to feed into the county’s needs,” says Wever. Next on tap is tackling the capacity of Shelburne’s water treatment plant and lack of access to a major waterway. Currently, the town must rely on the Nottawasaga Valley watershed to remove wastewater. However, the town’s sustainability efforts, including establishing town-wide water metering requirements and reviewing rates and charges on this regularly, has allowed them to reduce water demand. The town has also replaced old sewer pipes in wet areas and introduced special drainage measures to avoid infiltration and inflow into the sanitary network. Several other studies and initiatives are underway, including a redesign of the wastewater plant to prepare for an upgrade to sustain population growth in the next 20 years. The town will also add a second water tower in the south end to alleviate water shortage issues and meet fire flow requirements and upgrade its well that is based four kilometers west of town