CANMORE – If you plan to start a new business in Canmore, you may be required to provide employee housing after the final version of the Town’s new land use by law is approved.
Following first reading of the bylaw in February, administration held several meetings with the accommodation sector to rewrite a requirement that stipulated new hotels and hostels on Bow Valley Trail would have to provide onsite employee housing.
Instead, the proposal will likely be expanded town wide, drop the requirement that employee housing must be built onsite and include any new or expanding business, not just the accommodation sector.
The possible changes to the proposed bylaw, which passed first reading in November, follows strong opposition from the hotel industry, which was concerned the initial proposal unfairly targeted their industry to help resolve the town’s housing shortage.
During a public hearing in February, the Canmore Hotel and Lodging Association (CHLA) told council its members weren’t opposed to providing employee housing, but were against being singled out and having to build employee housing onsite.
“We’ve been actually providing staff accommodation or employee housing for many, many decades,” said John Brownlee, president of the CHLA, during a Bow Valley Chamber of Commerce breakfast discussion about the subject on May 1.
“We realized that if you don’t make this part of your business model you will not succeed, not at the scale of our current hotel properties here in Canmore and Banff, so staff accommodation, or employee housing, is extremely important.”
The being said, he reiterated his organization’s concerns that onsite housing could impact guests’ experience because both guests and employees could run into each other at inopportune times. He also reiterated his organization’s concern that onsite housing doesn’t allow employees to properly integrate into the community.
“Hotels are meant to be special places and although we enjoy interaction with employees of those hotels because they usually give service with a smile, at the same time when it’s time for us to relax in our room, or elsewhere, we don’t need to be bumping into them in their private time,” said Brownlee.
He said his organization also had concerns about the prescriptive nature of the bylaw, particularly when it came to the type of employee housing that hoteliers would be required to build.
“We’re all different, we all have different needs,” said Brownlee. “Some people come here with families and some people want to grow a family, so I think it’s important that if we are to have accommodation that we have various types of accommodation, so that we can attract strong leaders and people who will bring great influence and benefit to the workplace at large and also the community.”
Since the public hearing in February, he said he has had several meetings with the Town to find a solution that works for everyone and was pleased with how receptive the Town was.
“We asked for consultation and they listened,” said Brownlee. “We were very pleasantly surprised and happy to hear that council as well as administration were very open to hear our perspective.”
In the intervening time, he said administration has worked hard to rewrite the proposal to take their concerns into consideration and looked forward to seeing the bylaw at second reading.
“I’ve been very impressed with the way administration and council have been very open to changing the document and maybe making some adjustments here and there.”
Marcus Henry, the project leader for the new bylaw, said the revised land use bylaw will likely include a lot of the hotel sector’s concern.
“It’s no longer going to be this targeted approach along Bow Valley Trail because that’s what we heard in that engagement session,” said Henry. “It needs to be looked at on a broader level and that’s where we are going to be heading with the land use bylaw.”
He said the revised employee housing proposal will also take a more holistic approach and look at how all businesses can provide employee housing.
“We need to look at employee housing not just from one sector, but town-wide from all businesses because focusing on one sector isn’t really going to solve the problem,” said Henry, explaining the feedback they received has been extremely helpful.
Ron Remple, executive director for the Bow Valley Builders and Developers Association (BOWDA) said his organization initially recommended the land use bylaw require hoteliers along Bow Valley Trail provide employee housing.
He said their initial intent was to try to make it fair and equitable because as it currently stands Silvertip, Spring Creek Mountain Village and Three Sisters Mountain Village – the three largest developments in Canmore – are already required to build employee housing with any new commercial development.
At first reading of the new bylaw Remple said his organization was pleased with the proposal, however after hearing from the accommodation sector, BOWDA decided to change its position.
“We sat down with a number of hotel owners to discuss the land use bylaw and what was proposed and they brought up some really good points, so as a result of that we changed our position,” said Remple.
He said some of the issues that were discussed with the Town following first reading included changing the requirement that employee housing must be built onsite and expanding the proposal to other businesses.
“One of the biggest changes on our position after first reading is that we recommended the regulations shouldn’t be limited to the accommodation sector on Bow Valley Trail and that it needed to be expanded to other businesses within the community,” said Remple.
He said his organization recommended the new bylaw require businesses with 10 or more employees to build employee housing for 10 per cent of their workforce and allow the housing to be built offsite.
Remple said his organization also recommended changing the ratio between the number of rooms to employees, as well as changing the maximum and minimum size requirement for employee housing.
To enforce the proposed bylaw, his organization recommended the Town require businesses to complete a statutory declaration to prove they have employee housing when they renew their business licence.
Employee housing is expected to be included in phase two of Canmore’s land use bylaw, which is expected to be brought to council for second reading during the second quarter of 2020.
