Milton Council turned down 154 truck parking spaces at the former Mohawk Inn site on Guelph Line beside Highway 401

What Council decided

On March 16, 2026, Milton Council denied an application for a temporary use zoning by-law that would have allowed stand-alone commercial truck parking at 9230 Guelph Line for three years. The item, Town file Z-22/25, was both the statutory public meeting and the decision. The minutes record that the applicant's consultant made a presentation and three people addressed Council, the applicant among them.

Council then agreed to deal first with a councillor's motion that the application be approved and the by-law considered that night. That motion lost. The motion from staff report DS-019-26, that the application be denied, carried. The minutes do not record how individual members voted on either.

The site and the proposal

The property is on the west side of Guelph Line immediately north of Highway 401, south of the Elements Casino Mohawk grounds and across the road from the Town's Nassagaweya Tennis Centre and Community Hall. The staff report describes it as about 10.9 hectares, most of it covered by provincially significant wetlands and significant woodlands, with a vacant building and parking area at the front. That building was the Mohawk Inn, a motel that closed in 2020; the report says police have since used the empty buildings for training.

The applicant proposed to expand the parking area toward the interior of the site and to keep the two existing driveways onto Guelph Line. The report says a temporary by-law was sought, rather than a permanent rezoning, to give the owner time to prepare a redevelopment proposal. Under the Planning Act a temporary use can run for up to three years and be extended by Council.

Why staff said no

• Provincial policy: staff's opinion was that truck parking is not a permitted use on rural lands under the Provincial Planning Statement and does not conform to the Greenbelt Plan, the Regional Official Plan or the Town's Official Plan.
• Flooding: Conservation Halton's mapping shows the whole property inside the regulated floodplain of Kilbride Creek, so there is no flood-free way in or out.
• Old studies: the environmental site assessments dated from 2013, the forest management plan from 2014, and the environmental impact study from 2015, when it was written for a telecommunications tower.
• Traffic: the traffic analysis was not scoped with the Town, Halton Region or the Ministry of Transportation and did not estimate trips. The Region said the Guelph Line access does not meet its access guidelines, and the Ministry said it could not support the submission and that a Highway 401 expansion study is under way in the area.
• Zoning: neither of Milton's zoning by-laws permits stand-alone truck parking. Staff said such uses belong in the urban area.

Staff also wrote that the Town, the Region and Conservation Halton had told the owner and applicant at a pre-consultation meeting in March 2021 that they did not support the idea, and repeated that when the application was announced in November 2025. The Town accepted it in December 2025 without several studies it had asked for, on the view that the policy conflict settled the matter. The Region and the Ministry raised the prospect of trucks using Campbellville Road and other local roads that are not truck routes. Staff had received no public comments when the report was written.

Where it stands now

The denial leaves the 1985 zoning in place: a hotel or a gas bar on the front of the property and conservation uses on the rest. As of November 9, 2026, no later item on this property appears in Council minutes through July 13, 2026 or on the September 14, 2026 agenda, and the Town's ward application pages do not list it. Whether the refusal was appealed to the Ontario Land Tribunal could not be established from the Town's records.