Development incentives could spread

Council wants to hear if ideas would work in Broadway, Riversdale, writes Phil Tank.

Incentives to encourage development in downtown Saskatoon could one day be expanded to other parts of the city.

A city council committee on Monday agreed to hear back in about 12 months from city administration on using similar incentives in business districts like Broadway and Riversdale.

Council’s planning, development and community services committee heard several incentives have been devised to make downtown development more attractive.

These include a cash grant equivalent to a five-year tax abatement for new developments and waiving some fees like those for street closures. The city is hiring a downtown development co-ordinator to give developers a single person to deal with at city hall, rather than many.

The city can also perform preengineering on certain sites that are likely targets for development, the committee heard.

“We do have a significant amount of vacant land in the downtown that we would like to see developed,” said the city’s director of planning and development, Lesley Anderson.

Galen Heinrichs, the city’s water and sewer engineering manager, said some additional infrastructure challenges, like water and sewer pipe capacity, exist in neighbourhoods other than downtown.

Randy Pshebylo, executive director of the Riversdale Business Improvement District, said he would like to find ways to draw investment and development west of the “imaginary wall called Idylwyld Drive.”

STANDING PAT

City hall appears to be abandoning efforts to regulate the addition of air conditioners to existing houses.

Council’s planning, development and community services committee considered a report from the administration Monday that suggested it would not be effective to try to regulate the placement of air conditioners.

Two years ago, city council backed the drafting of a bylaw to help address noisy air conditioners installed next to existing houses.

City administration concluded in the report that introducing a mandated distance for air conditioners to be located from doors and windows on neighbouring houses would have “little to no effect” on noise.

“I’m not going to push for a draft bylaw here,” Mayor Charlie Clark said.

He asked city staff to explore a bylaw and spoke in favour of it in 2016 when he was a councillor. That year, the city studied eight cities in Canada, including the five largest Prairie cities, and found only two did not impose some restriction on the placement of air conditioners.

The city received nine formal complaints about air conditioner noise since 2010, the report says. Only one complaint was made about air conditioner noise in a low-density residential neighbourhood.

NEW IN EASTVIEW

Residents tired of looking at the vacant lot on a prominent corner near the Market Mall for nearly a decade may get some relief.

A report considered by the planning, development and community services committee Monday said Caswell Developments expects to complete a two-building redevelopment of the site of a former gas station by next year.

The vacant lot at the corner of Preston Avenue and Louise Street in the Eastview neighbourhood was home to a gas station demolished in 2009. In 2013, the property was remediated to the necessary standard for a commercial development to be built.

Under a program designed to encourage the development of vacant lots, the committee endorsed a five-year tax break for the $6.9 million project.

The tax abatement would amount to 67 per cent of the estimated property taxes for the completed retail development.

The tax break would amount to about $134,690 of the estimated total $201,030 in property taxes over five years. City council must still approve the tax abatement. ptank@postmedia.com twitter.com/thinktankSK