Canmore council approves 25-year downtown redevelopment plan — with some final changes

Canmore councillors unanimously approved a hefty, 25-year area redevelopment plan for its downtown on Tuesday, after making some final changes to the document.

The plan — dubbed 'Connect Downtown: Planning a Vibrant Centre' — is billed as a roadmap to guide the evolution of Canmore's town centre until 2050, as the town navigates an increasing number of visitors and an ongoing housing crisis.

It's been in the works since 2023. Council was scheduled to vote on the plan in late May, but after a lengthy public hearing earlier that month, councillors asked administration to make a series of changes to the plan and postponed the vote to July.

During that hearing, residents raised concerns, mainly related to density, green space and parking.

Proposed changes

Among the list of requested changes, councillors wanted to restrict building heights along Main Street and 10th Street to two-and-a-half storeys, with no variances allowed.

They also asked town administration to designate Eklof Park as a park space, after previous discussions about rezoning the land for affordable housing came under fire from residents.

Councillors also wanted to make it optional rather than permanent for Canmore's Main Street to be closed to pedestrians all year, rather than seasonally as it stands now.

Additionally, they wanted to make it clearer that any loss of surface parking space would be offset by increased parking elsewhere in the downtown.

Final changes

At a town council meeting on Tuesday, council heard town administrators' assessments of some changes.

Josh Cairns, senior policy planner and lead of the downtown plan, said Eklof Park can be preserved as a green space without changing the designation. So that lot remains designated as a municipal reserve.

But he also said restricting building heights to two-and-a-half storeys would have unintended consequences.

"Ultimately, what is going to end up happening is rather than fulfilling council's intent of limiting building heights and minimizing shadowing, it's going to force all developments to adopt a specific roof type, like a gabled or a hip roof," said Cairns.

"What that does is it might compromise the character of the area, the appeal and the visual aesthetic of the area without even necessarily minimizing shadows, because you can still have a gabled roof that goes up to a full 11 metres."

He added that it could prevent the town from preserving and enhancing some historic resources.

After hearing that assessment, Mayor Sean Krausert moved to backpedal on that change.

Now, as it did before, the plan states that building heights shall not exceed 11 metres and that design efforts — such as stepbacks — should be made to make third storeys look less imposing.

"What I heard was … the concerns that were raised can already be met with the original wording. And so, as such, I decided I'd prefer the original wording and would like to avoid those unforeseen and or unintended consequences," said Krausert.

There was an attempt made to remove the option for a year-round pedestrian zone and only keep the seasonal zone, but that was voted down by council.

'This is an excellent document'

Canmore's mayor said this plan for the downtown has been needed for a long time.

"I think that this is an excellent document," said Krausert.

"I believe that there's been excellent public engagement and we had a really excellent public hearing in which we listened and there were changes made as a result of what we heard."

A number of councillors thanked each other, administration and the public for their collaboration on getting the plan to the finish line.

"Some of the topics that got brought up were not easy. It made us stand up here and think thoughtfully about what we were about to do, and we didn't agree on all of those things all the time. And I think that's actually a good thing," said Coun. Wade Graham.