If you don’t know too much about road allowances and how they might relate to affordable housing in Canmore – you are not alone.
Road allowances are a way that a municipality in Alberta can exchange land with a developer through the subdivision process. It has been used in the past in Canmore with Three Sisters Mountain Village to acquire land for affordable housing, and is expected to be useful in the future of Smith Creek.
But some in the community have implied the land that would be acquired through road allowances in the remaining lands to be developed in Three Sisters is enough to solve the affordable housing issue in the community.
The master bylaw and subsequent settlement agreement approved in 1998 sets out that up to 30 acres, 12.1 hectares, of land in closed road allowances could be provided to the Town of Canmore. But manager of planning and development Alaric Fish explained the situation is just not as simple as that one clause suggests.
Road allowances crisscross the entire province of Alberta and are the jurisdiction of municipal governments. If a roadway is not developed along where the allowance exists, however, that land can be provided to a land developer by the municipality in exchange for land somewhere else.
In many cases, a road allowance may cross through areas slated for development, in which case an agreement with the municipality is reached. When road allowances, however, sit along lands not being used for development – for example inside a wildlife corridor – they do not end up resulting in a land swap.
With significant land in the remaining developable lands in Three Sisters – the Smith Creek area – being unsuitable for development, Fish said that means Canmore will not realize as much of a boon in community lands that some people assume is coming.
“The developer does not have to give us corresponding land for those pieces that are undevelopable,” Fish said. “There is a suggestion there will be quite a bit of land forthcoming in Smith Creek.”
Councillor Sean Krausert said until the lands come forward for subdivision, there is no way to provide an exact amount.
“This is not a gift of land from the developer,” Krausert said. “This is an exchange of land for a road right of way and it is equal amounts of land which serves both parties.”
Krausert warned against misinterpreting the clause included in the legislation and the entire process.
As Three Sisters has developed, however, it has swapped lands with the municipality for road allowances, resulting in the property owned by Canmore Community Housing Corporation on Dyrgas Gate being provided.
There was also an exchange of lands for units of perpetually affordable housing built into Mineside Court by the developer at the time it was built.
