The future of development in downtown Kingston is looking up.

Up 20 storeys, that is, the proposed height for several highrise projects along Queen Street that have touched off a community debate about how the city’s skyline should look.

Kingstonians were first shown plans last spring for The Capitol, a residential tower at 223 Princess St. that backs onto Queen Street.

It is being proposed by IN8 Developments of Toronto.

Then, just before Christmas, Kingston-based Homestead Land Holdings released its drawings for a pair of 20-floor apartment buildings at the bottom of Queen Street that will sit on two highly polluted parcels of land currently used as parking lots.

Homestead hopes to receive city planning approval and break ground on one of the projects by mid-2016.

“This is an area in transition, underutilized for the past 20 years,” said David Trousdale, the company’s manager of acquisitions and corporate development. “We feel these [buildings] will bring life and vibrancy to the area.”

Building up 20 floors would be a quaint notion in a city the size of Toronto where massive towers dominate.

But not in Kingston, where opponents of highrises point out that city officials should carefully monitor such developments so that the abundant historic limestone and brick architecture doesn’t get lost in a sea of glass and steel.

“I don’t feel highrises belong in the downtown core,” Gisele Pharand said. “It will ruin the attractiveness and won’t be good for tourism and downtown businesses.”

Pharand recently sent a petition to city councillors, signed by 222 people, asking that they uphold planning guidelines that set a maximum height of between four and six storeys in the areas where the three projects would be built.

In her petition, Pharand wrote that perhaps the buildings could be constructed as high as eight and 10 storeys, maximum.

But she changed her mind about that compromise when many of the additional comments sent along by petition signers urged low development over tall.

“Some people didn’t sign the petition because they didn’t feel the height should go up at all,” Pharand said. “I think the new consensus will be: let’s insist on having council support the existing bylaws. That’s going to be the new push: let’s stick with the existing bylaws. The downtown core is viable and we’re trying to maintain its historic charm.”

Trousdale said height was just one of the issues with which Homestead grappled after buying the Queen Street properties in 2014.

He said Homestead always knew it would have to build in the 20-storey range to compensate for the underground pollution that restricts how deep they can dig for parking spaces.

The area was the former location of a gasification plant that operated from the mid-1800s to the 1950s, and the coal tar waste from the operation, which is a highly toxic substance, seeped into the ground and still lurks in the seams of the limestone bedrock.

“You can’t get into that contamination,” Trousdale said. “That’s why we’re limited on how deep we can go.”

So Homestead changed its approach, coming up with a “podium” design using parkades — parking garages that front the streetscape but will be designed to fit the style of the surrounding heritage architecture.

The towers will be set further back.

The 20-storey apartment building at 51-57 Queen St., for example, will be located behind a six-level parkade that Homestead will build and then sell to the city for $18 million.

Across the street, Homestead will construct another six-level structure with commercial space on the ground floor, four levels of parking in the middle, topped by the company’s new business headquarters.

That parking will be available for tenants of the second 20-storey tower at the corner of Queen and Ontario streets.

Trousdale said the 380 new apartments, combined with Homestead’s own corporate presence and the public parking garage, will be good for the downtown.

“These designs we brought forward are somewhat of a compromise. We were open to the idea of putting truly mixed use on the sites. The [Homestead] office space is a positive for downtown because it keeps those jobs downtown,” he said.

“There’s a lot of great amenity and entertainment in a small radius. People want to work, shop and play in the same area. These [apartments] are providing that lifestyle for the people who want it.”

Trousdale said there is a growing trend among seniors to sell their suburban neighbourhood homes and move into downtown highrises where there is less need to drive vehicles.

“Projects like these are really a major aspect of sustainability. You’re not creating new road networks. You’re taking cars off the roads,” he said. “You’re seeing that in cities across Ontario. There isn’t the appetite to keep extending roads and services.”

The tower projects at either end of Queen Street have won the critical backing of the downtown business association, which anticipates considerable economic spinoff for its members.

Downtown Kingston Business Improvement Area president Ed Smith also weighed in on the issue of building height.

“It’s important to state that 20-storey towers would not be appropriate in all areas of the downtown, but these projects where proposed are set back from historic Princess and Brock street areas and would be a very positive influence on the economy of the downtown and Kingston in general, while taking nothing away from the appeal of downtown Kingston for citizens and visitors alike,” Smith said in a written statement.

King’s Town District Coun. Rob Hutchison said he understands the need for developers to build higher in order to compensate for the underlying polluted lands.

“The situation is complicated by the contamination,” he said. “If you want to develop there, it’s arguable you have to allow some sort of leeway. Obviously, it’s going to cost more to build.”

However, he also agrees with community concerns about esthetics: “Is it far enough from the old City Hall to not have an appreciable effect on one of the main attractions to Kingston? And there is contextual precedent. If you allow it for someone, on what grounds do you deny it for anyone else?”

Hutchison is concerned that the previous council already set the wrong precedent when it voted to allow for the possibility of an 18-storey hotel on the city-owned North Block land adjacent to both of the Homestead properties.

While developers want to build higher, what Hutchison is hearing from constituents is “lower, lower.”

“A huge amount of value has been built into the downtown since the 1970s,” he said. “We have to be careful we don’t destroy that value that’s been building up. People have legitimate concerns about height and dwarfing the historic downtown. We need to densify, but you have to be patient and wait for the right deals. We need densification, but we don’t need 20 storeys to get there.”

Hutchison described city councillors and planning staff as “thrashing around in the dark” when it comes to deciding on four versus 20 storeys — or some sort of compromise — because private developers never open their books to reveal what might yield “a reasonable profit.”

“We don’t know what’s reasonable to ask for,” Hutchison said.

What he does know is that compromise over planning rules can open “huge doors” for developers to ask for even greater concessions.

“Developers know [planning rules] can be changed because city councils are notorious for abrogating their own official plans. This is why people become cynical,” he said.

Pharand said city officials are being lobbied hard to reject the 20-storey proposals.

“I got 69 important and interesting comments about people’s vision for downtown Kingston. They want to keep the historic downtown,” she said. “People have a voice. I’m trying to give the benefit of the doubt to the new council — that they want to be open to the community voice. Councillors are human. Staff are human. We have to convince them how much this is going to ruin the downtown.”

Trousdale, meantime, said his company’s two apartment/parking projects will bring in new residents and visitors to support the downtown economy and promote the city’s desire for intensification.

“Everybody’s working to try to strengthen the downtown core,” he said.

paul.schliesmann@sunmedia.ca