OLDS — During its town council’s Oct. 2 policies and priorities meeting, town council debated several proposed changes to the land use bylaw designed to encourage construction of high-density housing in the community.
Those changes, suggested by administrative staff, include relaxing green space requirements and height restrictions along highways in town.
If passed, those changes could allow development officers to vary the rules by 25 per cent, which could result in buildings as high as four floors.
The current requirement is for 15 per cent of highway commercial lots to include green space.
If proposed changes go through, a development officer could have the power to vary that requirement to suit the situation in order to encourage high-density housing in the area.
Currently, the Town requires 1.75 parking stalls per unit of development.
The proposed changes would make that a one to 1.25 ratio.
Some councillors weren’t entirely sold on that idea, saying it’s just not feasible or realistic in a car and truck-oriented community like Olds.
However, several councillors liked Coun. Dan Daley’s idea of creating a range of parking requirement ratios, depending on the proposed high-density development.
Administrative staff described secondary suites as "the simplest and most cost-effective tool to increase housing stock” in the community.
Currently, the Town prohibits secondary suites in the R3 land use and restricts suites in the R2 district to those within the principal residence. Basement suites are allowed, but garden suites or garage suites are not allowed.
R2 and R3 zoning allows for the development of multi-unit residential buildings.
The proposal by administrative staff is to allow secondary suites in all residential districts in town and that the restriction on types of secondary suites allowed in the R2 district be removed.
Chief administrative officer Brent Williams told council that all the proposed changes are proposed to remove impediments to high-density housing that staff learned from speaking to developers.
Williams suggested something needs to be done to provide more high-density housing – and soon, if for no other reason than the number of international students that Olds College hopes to attract to its campus over the next few years.
"The housing issue is not going to get any easier; it’s going to get much worse,” he said.
“They plan to bring in more students this year. They plan on 200 more next year and 200 more than the year after. Where are those people going to live?”
Williams spoke to the requirements in general. He stressed the introduction of these ideas was “just to start a conversation.”
“Developers don't want to build homes that people don't want to live in,” Williams said.
“So even though government's job in a way is to ensure that we are doing what's right by the community: safety, appearance, aesthetics, etc., there has to be some level of trust that when people are investing millions of dollars to build something, they're not going to want to build something that's ugly, or incompatible with existing uses surrounding it, or something people aren't going to buy.
“You have to have some trust in my opinion, in the private sector.”
He pointed out that in the case of the highway commercial district, a variance was approved to allow construction of the ConnectFirst Credit Union building.
Regarding the number of parking stalls required per residential unit, Williams said that figure actually makes such units unaffordable because it cuts down the number of units a developer is willing to build. Thus, the fewer the units, the higher the price of those units.
"Adding garage and garden suites to our ability in R2 districts and then opening up the R3 will provide room for the private sector to give us solutions instead of us trying to give them solutions,” he said.
Coun. Wanda Blatz was among those who were concerned about cutting back parking requirements for residential units.
She said parking is already hard to come by in areas like Sierra Close where there are several four-plexes.
“I think that’s something council really needs to give a fulsome consideration to.”
That said, she did like the idea of having developers come up with possible solutions to the problem.
Coun. James Cummings said he’s all for changing the height restriction along the highway commercial district.
In fact, he hinted he’d be OK with allowing four-storey buildings in Uptowne as well.
“That seems to be a trend in a lot of downtown cores now is to bring people to downtown and have more residences downtown,” Cummings said.
"If you go back and you walk into the Co-op today and take a look at some of the pictures from the past century, and the 20s and 30s, you'll see four storey structures downtown,” he added.
“I’d love to see more storeys in there. It's just where I think that more growth can go in the vertical (direction) and preventing urban sprawl.”
Cummings said the Town should just let the private sector work out the number of parking spaces in those properties because he said they have a vested interest to make sure they’ve got enough parking for their customers.
However, Cummings echoed Coun. Blatz’s concern about parking in residential areas, noting he has an adult son living at home.
“It's unrealistic to expect Albertans in a rural setting like Olds to have less than one vehicle per person of adult age, driving age, in our community,” he said.
In regard to the highway commercial district, Cummings wondered if the requirement for 15 per cent green space could instead become a kind of levy in lieu of that green space requirement.
He noted that for example, there’s a need to find space for new schools.
Deputy mayor Heather Ryan echoed the points and concerns raised by others.
She did expressed concern about the possibility of allowing secondary suites in R1 (single family detached home) districts saying “the constraints in those areas are a little bit different.”
However, Williams said it’s his understanding that secondary suites are already allowed in those districts.
Overall, Mayor Judy Dahl said she agreed with the parking relaxation idea, but said in some areas – for example homes without garages – that policy may have to be tweaked.
