South River council has given its clerk-administrator the go ahead to draft a bylaw that would control how shipping containers are used and located in the municipality.
Don McArthur will use as a template a bylaw Joly Township has in place over how it governs the use of the steel structures.
The containers will not be allowed in the residential part of the municipality, McArthur says, nor can they be put on land designated as part of the downtown commercial.
Under the proposed bylaw, language will allow shipping containers in rural areas of South River in addition to the highway commercial and industrial areas of the municipality.
The Joly bylaw prohibits people from putting the containers on the front of their properties.
They must be placed in the rear and have to be at least 30 metres, about 100 feet, from the street.
McArthur says the South River bylaw would also propose no containers be placed on the front of the properties, but the 30-metre setback might be reduced.
“Ten or 15 metres might be more appropriate,” McArthur said, because some lots in these instances might not be large enough to allow for a long setback.
The bylaw will contain a provision where existing containers, including any in residential neighbourhoods, will be grandfathered.
Furthermore, the owners won't be required to get a building permit in the grandfathered scenario.
McArthur said in this instance, the containers were put in place before any bylaw controlled where and how they are used.
However, he's only aware of one shipping container that falls into this residential category.
One thing the bylaw will prohibit is renovating the containers and turning them into homes.
Coun. Teri Brandt asked if people could buy the containers, put them on a residential lot and move into them once they had been renovated into living quarters.
Brandt says people have been known to do this and have turned the containers into cottages.
McArthur says the proposed bylaw will prevent this and the containers are intended solely as storage units.
In this regard the South River bylaw will be similar to the Joly bylaw, which prohibits people from living in the containers and also stops them from running a business out of the steel units.
However, since no regulation currently exists, there is nothing to stop a person in the meantime from turning a shipping container into a home with the appropriate renovations.
But deputy mayor Doug Sewell told council colleagues that before anyone tries to renovate an existing container, they still need to fulfill several conditions, including getting an engineer's report which can cost around $4,000 since the container's use is being changed.
The individual would also need a building permit and site control plan and suddenly, what at first may have appeared to be a cheap way to build a home, becomes a little more expensive.
McArthur hopes that during the time he drafts the proposed bylaw and gets it back for further input from council at the May 25 meeting, that there isn't a rush by the public to plop down shipping containers on their properties.
McArthur says once the proposed bylaw is ready, it will go to the public comment stage and that's when taxpayers can tell staff and council what they like or don't like about it.
“And if it's too restrictive, the public will tell us that,” he said.
McArthur says from start to finish, getting to the completed bylaw stage is about a 90-day process.
If the proposed bylaw is approved by council, people wanting shipping containers will have to get a building permit and will also need to fill out a zoning compliance form which sets out where the container can sit on the property.
- Rocco Frangione is a Local Journalism Initiative reporter who works out of the North Bay Nugget. The Local Journalism Initiative is funded by the Government of Canada.
