One developer in St. Albert’s downtown wants to build a high rise and has been meeting with the city to discuss tenancy, the mayor said Wednesday.
During an editorial board meeting with the St. Albert Gazette, Mayor Nolan Crouse revealed the city has met “six or eight” times with an unnamed developer. According to Crouse, the landowner wants to start moving construction forward.
Crouse also said the city has been approached by the Sturgeon Community Hospital to “become involved” at their site.
“We’ve avoided that one to some degree,” Crouse said.
Administration has long pointed out the dwindling amount of space at St. Albert Place. Plans several years ago to build an administrative building in the downtown were shelved due to the potential cost. The city has since been leasing space at different locations downtown to alleviate the space crunch.
Crouse said there have been no talks with Amacon, the Vancouver-based developer that wants to build a $450-million project on the Grandin mall location. Called St. Albert Village, the project, shelved during the economic downturn in 2008, would feature five high-rise residential towers up to 19 storeys in height.
A vote at the beginning of October aligned the downtown area redevelopment plan (DARP) with the land use bylaw, which puts in place a minimum height restriction of three storeys for future buildings in the downtown.
Crouse said he didn’t know if the city would become a tenant of the proposed high-rise downtown, but said he is interested in the idea.
“We have been in quite a few meetings with them and I don’t know if it’s going to go anywhere, but we’re interested in moving it forward.”
