A plan to build three, six-storey apartment buildings on the edge of a residential area raised again on Tuesday night what’s become a central debate in London:

What’s more important, the need for mixed, infill development or the need to retain the character of a residential area?

“We need to use the land more efficiently. We need a more compact urban form,” consultant Laverne Kirkness, representing Drewco Development, told planning committee in support of the apartments.

“There is no reason why a six-storey apartment building has to be there,” countered Drew Smith, representing hundreds of angry residents of a neighbourhood just southwest of Sunningdale Rd. E and Adelaide St. N.

City planners think both aims, infill and residential character, can be met in the development.

But politicians on planning committee still were debating the proposal at press time.

Drewco Development Corp., a sister company of Drewlo Holdings, wants to build three apartment buildings, each 18 metres high, with a total of 314 units close to Sunningdale and Adelaide.

The buildings would be about 30 metres from the backyards of 18 single family homes on Garibaldi Ave., and as the road turns, about the same distance from the street.

The developer wants a zoning change to increase the density and height of the buildings allowed on the site from 35 units a hectare and up to 12 metres high to 75 units a hectare and up to 18 metres high.

None of the 136 property owners who replied to a city survey supported the idea, and more than 240 people signed a petition against the change.

Residents have a variety of concerns, chief among them the impact of six-storey apartment buildings and parking lots plunked on land that’s already higher than their streets.

The addition of 314 apartment units would add to traffic, noise and parking problems in the neighbourhood, residents say.

They noted that a community plan for the area created years ago with developer input recommended medium density development at the most.

“We bought into the (community) plan and now Drewco wants to change it,” Smith said.

The city planning department recommends the change in zoning, saying the more intense and mixed development conforms to the overall official plan of London.

Traffic volumes will be within acceptable limits, there is enough parking for the units and the buildings will be set back from the neighbourhood, said city planner Amanda Brea-Watson.

The community plan encourages a mix of housing types, she added.

Drewco has designed the complex so trees buffer the neighbourhood from the apartments and designed the apartments in a stepped way to make them a transition from the busy arterial roads to the neighbourhood, Kirkness said.