Council grapples with proposals for development in southeast fringe

Elected officials spent hours Tuesday grappling with how the city should grow as they discussed a request from two developers that want to start building the first phase of an isolated urban development in South Shepard.

Council ultimately deferred any decisions on a request from Hopewell Residential and Melcor Developments to begin developing 155 hectares in a former hamlet in the city’s deep southeast.

The area lacks leading infrastructure, has not been identified as a priority growth area in the city’s budgets or plans, and Mayor Naheed Nenshi said development comes with an estimated price tag of $7.5 million in annual operating costs.

“That’s an additional cost that’s equivalent to a half a percentage point increase in taxes on everyone in the city,” Nenshi told reporters.

Instead of taking administration’s recommendation to turn down the request, council voted 9-6 in favour of Ward 14 Coun. Peter Demong’s motion asking that the issue come back to council after residential sprinklers in growth areas are studied, along with a review of the fire department’s response time target policy, and an analysis of fire response times across the country.

“Council has avoided a very big question on fire for many, many years,” Nenshi said.

“What it really seems to me is that council is willing to let the next council have that conversation.”

Nenshi and councillors Brian Pincott, Richard Pootmans, Ward Sutherland, Gian-Carlo Carra, Andre Chabot, Ray Jones, Druh Farrell and Demong voted in favour of the referral.

Much of the debate focused on the fact the proposed development area is outside of council’s sevenminute benchmark for emergency response service, with the nearest fire stations located 7.8 km away in McKenzie Towne and 9.4 km away in Seton.

A report from city bureaucrats urged council not to pave the way for urban development in the area by refusing to remove a so-called Growth Management Overlay.

Nenshi said in recent years, council has adopted policies that restrict growth to areas where services such as transit, fire halls and adequate roads exist, and Tuesday’s unfinished debate was about deciding if development should happen in areas that are not properly serviced by infrastructure.

“This is a very, very existential piece for this council because when I first became mayor we put into place a number of principles around growth management and we’ve been working within those principles very well,” said Nenshi.

“This particular application breaks that mould. It is in an area that administration does not recommend future growth, that will have long emergency response times.”