By Cathy Ellis - Rocky Mountain Outlook
Published: June 25, 2009 9:00 AM
Town planners continue this week and next to be out and about in the community to get residents’ opinions on plans to increase residential density, but they are also expanding their public consultation.
In addition to the tent meetings in neighbourhoods throughout the community, the Town of Banff will host two public open houses in July to wrap up the first phase of the land use bylaw review.
An online survey has also been launched to get feedback on proposals to increase density to meet a housing shortage.
“Part of our outreach is to try to not only get out into the public, but also allow people who can’t make it out to give feedback online,” said Darren Enns, the Town’s senior planner and the project leader on the land use bylaw review team.
“We want to use the public open houses as a conclusion step for phase one. The idea is, we had informal outreach events and now we’re trying to do some wrap up in advance of presenting to council.”
The planning and development department will draft regulations over the summer based on the feedback they’ve heard in May, June and July. The proposed bylaw amendments will be brought to council in September.
The key drivers behind the Town of Banff’s plans to increase density include adapting to a townsite that has seen its population, now at 8,800 residents, grow by more than 15 per cent since 1998 and the loss of 60 acres for potential housing.
Town officials say the population is growing at a rate well above the national average and the availability of housing in town has not kept pace with that residential growth.
It is estimated Banff’s current housing shortfall is about 400 units. In addition, there are currently about 170 names on the Banff Housing Corporation’s waiting list for people wanting to buy homes.
The Town is looking at a range of ways to increase density, including changes to setbacks, building heights, adjusting floor area ratios, increasing site coverage, and the creation of more secondary suites.
But one of the biggest issues on which the town has been receiving feedback is potential rezoning of public service, public parkland and environmental protection lands to residential.
Planning and development officials say the idea behind this is that rezoning would help to alleviate development pressure on the existing neighbourhoods, but would often involve the conversion of parkland and green space to residential uses.
The review team will be out at Glen Avenue tonight (June 25) from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m.; at Bison Courtyard on Saturday, June 27, from 10 a.m. to noon and Middle Springs Playground next Tuesday, June 30 from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m.
As well, the Town will host open houses on Tuesday, July 7 at the YWCA from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. and on Wednesday, July 8, at council chambers from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. To take the online survey, go to www.Banff.ca
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