Close to 150 people showed up in person at Rocky View County (RVC) council's special meeting on Wednesday to hear the fate of a proposed plan for a shopping-residential development in the Bearspaw area.
Highfield Investment Group, the group behind the proposed “Ascension” shopping-residential development, is seeking to develop 883 housing units and a 50-acre individual pod-style retail space on a 275-acre tract of sloping farmland on the southwest corner of Highway 1A and 12 Mile Coulee Road on the city limits, immediately adjacent to the Calgary subdivision of Tuscany.
According to administration, the County initially received 494 letters or signs of objections to the proposed development from county residents throughout the first round of consultations. Only 16 letters or signs of support were submitted to the County in comparison.
In spite of the significant level of disapproval of the development, administration stated that the recommendation to council be that the planned development move forward.
A primary concern councillors expressed, presumably echoing community members, was that the development did not fit with the architectural and cultural style of the country-residential lifestyle. Representatives of the development team stated that the project would remain consistent with the country-residential lifestyle.
“The marketplace will have a consistent architectural theme to the rest of the Bearspaw area,” said Kathy Oberg, a representative of the Ascension development group. “[We’re doing this] with a made in Rocky View approach.”
The development team laid out a couple benefits that the community of Bearspaw would see, like a needed improvement to transportation infrastructure. It laid out plans to provide a buffer between the development and the neighbouring areas of Calgary. According to Oberg, the development density would decrease the closer Ascension gets to the city.
RVC Division 3 Coun. and Reeve Crystal Kissel and RVC Division 4 Coun. Samanntha Wright, whose divisions include the area that the development would be in, expressed some sense of opposition to the development in their initial questioning.
“How did you come to the conclusion that this fits with the country-residential lifestyle?” asked Kissel to the development team.
Oberg stated that the development would include transition housing to fit a density objective of 3.7 homes per acre, which would be over half the density of the nearby Tuscany neighbourhood, according to statistics presented in the Ascension development presentation shown to council.
Wright claimed that there were massive “concerns to buffer” the development to Calgary neighbourhoods. “Was there any consideration to not use Blueridge Rise Road [as a buffer]?” asked Wright.
A representative of the development team reiterated the Ascension density plan and stated that even with the 3.7 houses per acre figure, the density of Ascension would still be much larger than that of nearby Tuscany.
Bruce Hanson, the president of the Bearspaw Community Association, spoke in favour of the development.
“[The community association] thinks this is a good development,” he said. “There is a strong desire for an interconnected pathway through Bearspaw.”
Hanson claimed that the community association's support for the development was based on the opportunity for Ascension to help foster a stronger sense of community in Bearspaw by developing connected roads and pathways in the community.
“Bearspaw people need community,” he said. “[This] is looking to expand and bring the community together.”
Oberg, speaking for the development team, admitted that no formal survey on whether members of the Bearspaw community wanted a new development. However, according to Oberg, there was considerable interest from regional businesses that expressed a desire for the development of a retail centre in Bearspaw, although no such information was shared at the council meeting.
A resident of Bearspaw spoke in opposition to the development, saying that residents remain concerned about the potential swell in capacity of schools and other Bearspaw amenities already underway that would be pushed further with the new development. A general sense from other residents at the meeting was that the proposed development did not fit with the country-residential lifestyle, and the arguments made by the development team did not seem to assuage those concerns.
“The rug may be pulled out from under our feet,” said one Bearspaw resident who added that an increase to the school population that the development would influence was their primary concern.
"We do not support this development in any form, at all," said another Bearspaw resident who spoke to council. "It's disappointing to see administration approve this as is."
Due to the volume of people wanting to speak in opposition to the development–nearly two hour's worth of videos were sent into the council. According to a County officials–council simply could not vote on the issue in the time they had set aside for the meeting on Jan. 24.
Another special meeting where the debate on the motion and vote would be formally held was then scheduled for February 1.
