In the end, smart growth wasn’t so smart after all — and neither was city council. On Monday, during their last meeting of the term, councillors drove the final nail in the coffin of an issue that started with plenty of promise for planning the St. Albert of tomorrow. It ended three years later with a spectacular thud, a decision that not only sets back city planning efforts in the north, but will also end up costing taxpayers.
Smart growth was just a buzzword backed with a few case studies when it was incorporated in the municipal development plan (MDP) by the previous council in 2007. The details were to be written later, but it held the promise of planning more sustainable, densely populated and walkable neighbourhoods in St. Albert’s newly annexed land.
Filling in the details was left to the current council, which oversaw the long hours and heavy lifting the city’s planning and engineering staff put into it and related studies. When the first draft came to council it lived up to its promise of changing how land is used, but in doing so represented a wholesale departure from what made St. Albert — a suburb — appealing in the first place. With much of the background research rooted in the United States, the plan overlooked the obvious, most notably St. Albert’s status as a winter city, which has a direct effect on walkability. Perhaps the most glaring hole was the lack of understanding of market desires and whether St. Albert could support the amount of multi-family housing and influx of main street commercial.
The warning signs were there and so was doubt; at one point early this year Coun. Gareth Jones tried to stop the exercise altogether but council narrowly agreed to push on. The trepidation did not fade, not even when council was presented with ‘smart growth lite,’ a hybrid of St. Albert’s traditional development with pockets of high-density nodes and grid streets. That too was rejected and council asked for a “St. Albert model for future growth.”
That model will follow the blueprint established in the current MDP, minus any references to smart growth. It will feature none of the controversial smart growth elements like modified grid streets, back alleys, parkways or main street commercial on Villeneuve Road. The only idea council kept was a high-density mixed-use area likely along St. Albert Trail near a future park and ride. Council has also asked for an infill development plan, new development density targets and a location for a northern industrial park (after rejecting one by Carrot Creek earlier this year).
Three years and all we have is one high-density node and several plans still to come? But it doesn’t stop there. St. Albert’s transportation and utility master plans — both approved by this council — were built on the premise of grid streets. They have to be updated, and so do several other major engineering studies, the land use bylaw and MDP itself. All told, the planning and engineering work amounts to $3 million. It’s so much work it has to be spread over four years.
There’s no way to gloss this over, no lessons learned, no win-wins for St. Albert or future development, which surely will suffer a setback until all the plans are in place. Smart growth was a top priority of the term but this council was far from smart about how it managed the project. We’ll be paying for those costly mistakes for years to come.
