A long-planned acreage development north of St. Albert has cleared a hurdle at the Capital Region Board (CRB).
Last week the CRB's 24-member board of municipal leaders voted unanimously to approve Quail Ridge, a 90-lot subdivision north of the Riverlot 56 Natural Area.
Sturgeon County council gave second reading to the necessary municipal development plan and Sturgeon Valley area structure plan changes in early 2009, but CRB approval was needed before voting on third and final reading, which has not yet been scheduled.
Sturgeon Mayor Don Rigney welcomed the board's endorsement and said he was glad the development could finally go ahead. The delays had been expensive for everyone involved, he noted.
"It is a long time coming, it cost us our communities a lot of money to get this approval."
Jodie Wacko, director of land development with Beaverbrook Developments, the company behind Quail Ridge, said he was glad to have cleared the hurdle.
"It allows us to go back and deal one-on-one with Sturgeon County in advancing our development," he said. "We are now confident enough to get into the details and the fine grains of the project."
Density issue
The CRB's administration had recommended rejecting Quail Ridge because it did not meet regional housing density targets.
In acreage subdivision areas such as Sturgeon Valley the board's regional growth plan calls for housing to be developed at a density of two units per hectare.
The Quail Ridge plan calls for just 1.25 units per hectare.
The property is located near the Sturgeon River and the proposed plan would see the developer give up more than half of the land, 39 hectares to environmental reserves.
Those reserves abut the river and are not suitable for development.
When that land is removed from the equation the density of the proposed development will actually rise to exceed the CRB's target, Wacko explained.
Sturgeon County also argued that the overall density would be achieved across the entire Sturgeon Valley area as other developments stepped in to fill the void.
While the eventual vote was unanimous, several member municipalities expressed doubt about whether the overall density levels would be achieved when Sturgeon Valley is built out.
St. Albert Mayor Nolan Crouse wants the board to find ways to strengthen its rules to make sure the overall density is achieved over the long-term.
"We have to have some sort of a locking mechanism to make sure this is met."
Edmonton Mayor Stephen Mandel said he had received clear direction from his council that the CRB had to be steadfast in its rules to keep to the original growth plan.
"We will be adamant about what the plan states," he said. "If we keep bending the rules we will have no rules left."
Rigney assured other leaders around the table that it would be in future developers' best interests to achieve higher densities.
"It will happen. There is a huge economic incentive to make it happen," he said. "That is a huge assurance people don't throw money away willy-nilly."
Road alignment
Another issue that had previously been a concern for Edmonton and St. Albert was the proposed alignment of 127th Street.
The road is being realigned with the construction of Anthony Henday Drive and will veer west toward Sturgeon Valley. The road will most likely go through Quail Ridge and is considered a major transportation route.
Sturgeon County council will debate spending $250,000 for an alignment study that would be begin sometime in 2011. Assuming Quail Ridge goes ahead, Wacko said Beaverbrook could work around the unknown alignment.
"We basically configured our first stage to go where the road is not going to go," he said. "We are quite comfortable with the road details being worked out over the next 12 months or so."
After the meeting, Rigney said he was glad to see the development approved, but he was concerned about the economic cost the delay caused.
Wacko said the development had several complex planning issues that needed to be worked around and it was hard to specify how much of that time was devoted to the CRB.
"I don't know if I can clearly say that the addition of the Capital Region Board cost us an additional 18 months, but what I can say is that it certainly did make the process more complicated."
As a new organization it is also hard to know what the board expects and it doesn't have an informal process for developers to receive board feedback, he said.
"The board is the one that will fundamentally give you a direction on the big picture of what you are doing and because it is such a young organization there isn't really a track record for you to go back and review."
