Coming Up: Aug 23
Council meets on Monday. The most significant items on our agenda:
Leisure Centre Demolition
Capital Budget
Clean Energy Loans
College Park Area Redevelopment Plan
Following is more information and my take on agenda items.
As always, any mistakes or opinions belong to me and me alone, not to Council or City staff.
While I express my current views below, I work hard to go into meetings ready to listen and with an open mind. I learn new information and participate in debate. This always informs, and sometimes changes, how I vote on issues.
If you would like to watch the meeting or read any of its supporting material for yourself, you can do so by clicking here. The City will post the highlights of Council’s decisions here.
LEISURE CENTRE DEMOLITION
The old Leisure Centre has been partly shut down for years. Due to severe structural issues, it is unsafe to use the pool half of the building. However, the field house side has been operating.
The Leisure Centre building shares a wall with the current Composite High School building. Once the new high school is complete, the province will be demolishing the old one. At that time, the City has to do something with the Leisure Centre. There are two real options. Both of them are expensive, and neither of them are great. They are:
Partial demolition: tear down the pool side of the pool while leaving the fieldhouse side up. Significant structural work would need to be done to make this possible.
Full demolition
It is recommended that Council support a full demolition. If approved, this would occur in early 2023.
I’m likely to support this. The Leisure Centre is an old building with no architectural significance: spending big money to preserve part of it doesn’t make sense to me. Furthermore, the fieldhouse is an old style of field and the spectator area is very rarely filled. If we’re going to invest in recreation, it makes sense to invest in facility types that have more current demand.
However, it isn’t enough to just demolish this building. It is in a strategic part of town, and used by many different groups. Council needs to work quickly with the community to plan to replace it. We likely don’t need anything fancy in this part of town. But some sort of indoor recreation space should be maintained on this land.
CAPITAL BUDGET CHANGES
It is recommended that Council authorize several additions to the 2021 Capital Budget. These iinclude:
Upgrades to 911 Dispatch technology ($200,000)
Stucco repair on the Coca Cola Centre ($73,000)
Upgrades on 108 St north of 132nd Ave ($1,500,000 with the County sharing some costs)
Traffic Signals near St. John Paull II High School ($100,000)
Slope repair on the Bear Creek just north of 68th Ave ($1,000,000)
In my mind, all of these recommendations are “need to haves.” They are either safety related, or they will avoid higher costs to the City in the long-term. Furthermore, all these projects can be paid for through existing funding streams rather than by levying new taxes. I intend to support them.
CLEAN ENERGY IMPROVEMENT PROGRAM (CEIP)
The provincial and federal governments are working together to allow municipalities to implement a Clean Energy Improvement Program (CEIP). These programs are very common in the US, and are becoming common in Canada. They allow property owners to get low interest financing to undertake projects which save them money while reducing Green House Emissions.
How they work:
A property owner takes out a loan for energy efficiency or generation projects. This loan is attached to the property, not the owner: if the property is sold, then the new owner will be responsible for the remining loan. This allows owners to undertake projects with long payback times, even if they are not sure that they will own the property for that entire time.
This loan is payable to the municipality, which collects it through additional property taxes levied on the property. Since there are very strong legal tools for a municipality to recover unpaid taxes, this means that the loan is very low risk, allowing it to be offered at a low interest rate.
The Federal government has made funding available for these loans. Municipalities can access this money to make CEIP loans available without any cost or risk to local taxpayers.
The provincial government recently made necessary changes to allow for municipalities to participate in CEIP programs. Now there is a recommendation for Council to support an enabling Bylaw. I intend to support this Bylaw: I’m excited to help local residents and businesses save money while helping the environment.
COLLEGE PARK AREA REDEVELOPMENT PLAN
College Park is an interesting neighbourhood, with houses from many different decades. It is also a neighbourhood which has low density, aging infrastructure, and some properties in under-repair. Which has led to Council discussing infill potential in the neighbourhood.
Development in College Park is currently driven by an Area Redevelopment Plan (ARP) dating back to 1998. One of the big goals of this ARP was to limit development to single-family dwellings. It has led to some very nice new homes getting built. But prohibiting other forms of housing as also led to low redevelopment in the neighbourhood.
It is proposed that Council pass a new College Park ARP. You can read it here.
This new ARP would allow for low and medium density multi-family residential development, not just single detached homes. At the same time, it would introduce architectural controls to help new buildings fit into the neighbourhood. It also includes calls for a number of community improvements, including entrance features and improvements to Borstad Point (the top of the toboggan hill).
Overall, I do think that greater opportunity for infill should be created. So I support removing the prohibition on anything but single detached homes. At the same time, changes need to be done in a way that is sensitive to current residents of the area. Some thoughts and concerns I have as I consider this ARP:
There needs to be opportunity for both renters and owners in each neighbourhood. I have concerns that redevelopment could lead to pushing out ownership opportunities in College Park. I wonder if more should be done to encourage higher density housing forms that are often owner-occupied (ex: row housing and narrow lot homes) and discourage forms that are traditionally rental-only properties (ex: three plexes and four plexes).
The plan calls for effort to be made to preserve mature trees when densification occurs. However, I’m wondering what thought was put into requiring the replacement of any trees which are removed with a larger tree than is usually required in new development.
Residents have concerns about parking. This is a common concern across the City, but has extra weight in this neighbourhood due to people accessing the college parking in it. The ARP calls for the development of a parking strategy, which I appreciate. But I wonder what timelines and processes for developing it look like: it is too bad that one isn’t being presented alongside the ARP.
I’m looking forward to discussion and debate as Council discusses the new College Park ARP.
That’s what is on our agenda for Monday. I’d love to hear your thoughts.
You can comment below. Or, you can contact me at dbressey@cityofgp.com or 780-402-4166. I'm happy to talk online or over the phone. I'm also always willing to setup a time to meet for coffee.
We also always have great conversation in the GP Round Table group on Facebook.
After Council meeting, you will be able to find highlights posted by the City here.
Thanks for reading!
-Dylan