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Big changes proposed for Canmore's Land Use Bylaw

The Town of Canmore is proposing major changes to a select few sections of the Land Use Bylaw, even though a municipal election is occurring in October. The municipality held an open house on Wednesday evening (Aug.

The Town of Canmore is proposing major changes to a select few sections of the Land Use Bylaw, even though a municipal election is occurring in October.

The municipality held an open house on Wednesday evening (Aug. 2) to introduce changes being considered to the bylaw at this time.

After a complete rewrite of the Municipal Development Plan last year, council provided direction to administration to bring forward changes to the Land Use Bylaw that would reflect that vision moving forward.

As a result, five sections of the bylaw are being discussed leading up to the election: green building standards, employee housing, accessory suites, steep creek regulations and administrative changes.

Alaric Fish, manager of planning for the Town of Canmore, said council has been clear in its direction to address these issues with changes to the bylaw.

“This council has been clear that they want to take action on these issues and this is the mandate they were elected on, especially housing,” Fish said. “They are willing to address these issues even though there is an election coming up.”

The change proposed to secondary suites should come as no surprise to the community, as council has discussed the issue at length and Canmore Community Housing Corporation submitted a policy paper to council two years ago.

The change being considered would allow accessory suites in all single family home zoned neighbourhoods, whether they have a lane or not. Currently, the bylaw only allows development of suites on properties with lane access to address concerns around parking.

Fish said changes include reducing parking requirements in locations where there is a transit stop nearby or it is already within easy walking distance of the downtown core and services.

“We do know there are a variety of opinions on this,” Fish said.

The rules around employee housing are proposed to change in a major way, according to Fish. Employee housing will be required to be built for new commercial development based on size, or developers would have to provide cash in lieu of housing.

As well, Fish said, bylaw changes include a new levy on residential property taxes to help support the effort to develop employee housing in the community.

“It is a difficult issue because it is difficult to find (a mechanism) that is not too inhibitive to new development, or that is fair to everyone,” he said.

The major developers in the community – Silvertip, Three Sisters Mountain Village and Spring Creek Mountain Village – all have requirements to provide employee housing as those resort developments move forward. However, there is nothing to require new hotels, or other large commercial developments to provide housing for added employees that are generated through growth.

“The second key piece to this is looking at adding an assessment change on the tax roll, potentially like the Perpetually Affordable Housing levy, that would fund the provision of employee housing,” Fish said, adding the goal is to see the issue addressed through a development-related and community wide contribution at the same time.

Green building standards are expected to change to reflect changes made to the building code in the province. Canmore was a leading municipality in Alberta when it comes to green building standards, having introduced them independently over a decade ago into the bylaw.

Fish said the changes also reflect how Natural Resources Canada has changed and the bylaw reflects that too.

“What this means is that we will get a better assessment of a home and what we are proposing are both penalties, targets and incentives relative to the new gigajoule estimates,” he said.

Bow Valley Builders and Developers Association executive director Ron Remple said he isn’t surprised this council is moving forward on Land Use Bylaw amendments, even though there is an election upcoming.

“I don’t have an issue with that personally, because I think a couple of the issues they are raising are things this council has said they wanted to address during their term, including employee and affordable housing,” Remple said. “The speed with which it is being done has gone into hyperdrive from being in a slow mode for months and now we are getting this done before the election.”

He acknowledged the speed with which this round of changes is being handled might cause concerns for some in the community. But he said the fact that changes to the bylaw are going to be made in phases over time, and this is the first one, as a reason to support the process going forward.

“The way I see it, administration is biting off manageable chunks on this and I think that is a good process, otherwise it could be overwhelming and nothing gets done,” Remple said.

As for specifics around the changes, BOWDA and its members have not seen what is being proposed. The full details of all the changes being considered can be found at canmore.ca.


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