Downtown housing needs new approach
One of the perpetual questions faced by the
City of Regina has been how to develop a critical mass of residential development in and around the downtown core.
It’s generally recognized that a city benefits from concentrated development that allows for more housing and community development within walkable neighbourhoods, and to ensure that city services can be provided more efficiently using existing infrastructure.
There’s seldom been a lack of talk as to how Regina could get there. In the past decade, city council has passed a general community plan that includes targets for intensified development in the city’s core, and neighbourhood plans tailoring the application of those principles to downtown and other areas.
And the city has taken some steps to assess what could be done to build a downtown capable of attracting and housing a more complete community.
Most notably, a new Underutilized Land Study released this summer has set out some possibilities for infill development — holding out the prospect that Regina could fit additional housing for more than 10,000 people in our city centre through infill developments alone, and a total of more than 19,000 residents in the larger area earmarked for intensification.
Unfortunately, for all the past talk, we’ve rarely seen much of the action needed to turn plans and possibilities into real development.
Sometimes, the problem has been the failure of developers to follow through on their plans — whether those have taken the form of mooted developments that never get off the ground, or projects started but left uncompleted.
Other times, it’s the city that has left its own commitments to gather dust.
We’ve rarely seen much of the action needed to turn plans ... into real development.
Of particular note, the most recent news updates from the “revitalization” of the Taylor Field neighbourhood and Dewdney Avenue railyard now date from over a year ago. And there appears to be growing reason for concern that the city will abandon the later phases of its revitalization plan now that the promise of housing and neighbourhood development has served its purpose of excusing the cost of a new stadium.
Finally, there have been times where no amount of planning or incentivization has led to the type of development needed to strengthen Regina’s core.
On that front, Coun. Andrew Stevens has raised pointed questions about the condition of Broad Street in particular. There, seemingly prime locations for development have been left vacant or abandoned — and the recent trend looks to be headed in the wrong direction.
Unfortunately, the question of how to push for urban development seems to have been answered based on an extremely narrow set of assumptions.
The Underutilized Land Study effectively presumes that the only available development model is one that provides incentives to the private sector — so while it identifies some sites suitable for development, it leaves unanswered the question of who might actually get the job done. And the city likewise seems to have generally accepted the view that its only role is to cater to private developers.
But it should be obvious from Regina’s recent building patterns that major developers are more inclined to build far-flung suburbs than to build the core of our city — first chasing newhome sales during a boom, then assembling apartment developments as the real estate market became saturated. And there’s no indication that past incentive structures have had any impact on that preference.
Fortunately, the opportunity to build up our downtown is available to public-sector actors as well as private ones. And if we want to move past our history of empty words and vacant lots, the city would be well served to see how it can invest in Regina’s core.