Plan to speed up growth in Calgary suburbs moving ahead to July council meeting

A marathon meeting of a Calgary city council committee concluded late Thursday night with a plan to continue work on up to eight new growth communities.

It was a lengthy meeting that began on Monday in which the city's infrastructure and planning committee condensed multiple growth decisions together, said Ward 9 Coun. Gian-Carlo Carra, who is also the chair of the committee.

"What we were doing was, we're beginning the conversation about our growth, about our growth decision making, to ultimately be made in November," Carra said.

"And we talked about the money that we're going to be spending in the established areas to accommodate more and more growth in the established areas."

The need for the new suburbs was precipitated, according to the city's report, on expected population growth over the 2023 to 2026 period. The report says the city's population is expected to grow by an additional 88,000 residents in that time, and that will translate into the need for about 44,000 homes.

The meeting involved a discussion of creating up to eight new suburban communities, five of which wouldn't carry any additional capital costs, because they would be located close to communities with infrastructure already approved.

The communities would, however, still come tagged with new operating costs.

The five communities recommended included three in the far southeast corner of Calgary:

• Seton Ridge
• Logan Landing
• Nostalgia

The two others are Lewiston, located on the city's far northwest, and Belvedere West, located on the city's eastern boundary near 17th Avenue S.E. 

Three additional potential communities will also come back to council at a later date, after additional analysis of "associated risks" has been completed. Those communities are Rangeview Trafford and Glacier Ridge communities C and D.

Carra said the "most contentious" vote of the week, which he voted against, took place on Thursday night, when council voted 6-5 to direct administration to prepare bylaws to potentially remove the city's growth management overlay for five of the proposed communities.

That could see development sped up. That decision will now be handled by council as part of a full meeting in late July before it would head to another meeting in September or October.

Work on the looming questions on the other three potential communities will also proceed prior to September.

In Carra's view, that move signalled to development industry players that "if you lobby the hell out of us, we're listening," given the move of those on council to not wait until budget to invest and unlock new undeveloped environments. 

"Hopefully, the checks and balances we have along the way, with cooler heads will prevail [and] our climate strategy will influence our decision making," he said.

"And we will make a much more thoughtful, comprehensive decision about growth in November and not pass what was suggested by committee."

Ward 10 Coun. Andre Chabot, who voted for the motion, said the new suburbs are crucial as affordability "goes out the window" and as the city has a limited supply of single family, residential and detached homes.

"There's only a few developers that have lands available to develop that type of product, and each developer individually can only develop so many homes every year," Chabot said. 

"So we felt that it would be beneficial to have more competition, more developers able to deliver more product sooner into the market, to alleviate some of the inflationary increases that are currently being experienced in the single family residential sector."

Calgary currently has 39 new communities already in progress. It also has 15 to 21 total years of supply approved. The eight proposed growth communities would add two to three years.

Chabot called a projected increase of 22,000 residents per year "very conservative" given the current high price of oil.

"But even the conservative estimate of 22,000 per year means that we're not going to have enough supply out there," he said.

"Unless we make use of investments that the previous council have made, to at least facilitate the ability for developers to move forward on some of the product that's in high demand right now, we're going to continue to force the price of the market up, which will make it impossible for people to be able to enter into that market."

Ward 1 Coun. Sonya Sharp also voted for the motion. She said council has a lot of work ahead of it.

"The development building industry has been pressured to deliver as many homes as possible, and in [the least] time as possible," she said. 

Conversation around the potential new communities comes after Calgary council decided against adding 11 new communities to the city's outskirts in late 2020. 

That had followed an approval in 2018 by council of 14 new communities, despite city administration at the time only approving eight based on lower demand for new housing.