OLDS — The town is “landlocked” due to residential developments that haven’t occurred and provincial rules that have blocked other development, chief administrative officer Brent Williams says.
Williams gave that assessment in an address to the Olds & District Chamber of Commerce during its annual general meeting, held March 8 at the Royal Canadian Legion Branch 105.
“Olds is landlocked by stagnant ASPs (area structure plans),” Williams said.
He cited Miller Meadows, a 40-acre parcel of land in the south end of town, off 57th Avenue, bordered by 60th Street and 53rd Avenue.
Development has been discussed there as far back as 2008. But little has happened.
A new plan featuring areas for low, medium and high-density housing was launched in 2018 and approved in 2019 but again, little has happened.
Williams cited two other ASPs for land in the northwest and north of town as two other examples.
“These are developers who either ran out of money – many blame COVID – or never quite got their crap together to build and now it’s just sitting there,” he said.
Williams said town officials are trying to work with those developers to get development started in those areas
“The town just can’t go and tell people what to do with their own land and I support (that),” he said
"We’re trying to figure, ‘how do we incentivize these people, who build in Red Deer, who build in Calgary?’ Saskatoon is another popular centre I’ve learned where investors who own land in Olds currently reside.
“To encourage them to build, ‘what can we do? What’s stopping you from doing this?’ That’s been a large point.”
Williams said a bottleneck to further development on land owned by Loblaws adjacent to No Frills is an Alberta Transportation policy.
He said Alberta Transportation won’t allow any lots to be created there until a road is built.
“But Loblaws owns the land. We are working through that,” he said.
Williams noted Loblaws officials were in Olds last week.
Williams said another goal is to get something going with “stagnant land” on the western edge of town.
"(There’s) a lot of interest there. We could never quite make it work though, but we’re trying,” he said.
