Land purchase plan green-lit by council
Staff recommended creating reserve fund to buy land it would then sell for redevelopment
Shane Magee
Northern News Services
Tuesday, May 31, 2016
SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
City council endorsed a plan by staff that will set aside money to buy up land in several neighbhourhoods and potentially demolish buildings before repackaging the land for redevelopment.
Jeff Humble, left, gives a presentation to city councillors May 9 about a plan to create a fund that would be used to buy property and then resell it as part of a revitalization plan. - Shane Magee/NNSL photo
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The plan was outlined several weeks ago by Jeff Humble, the city's director of planning and development. Last week, city council voted 6-1 in favour of adopting the plan.
During the last council term, staff were asked to come up with a plan regarding revitalization. Director of planning and development Jeff Humble presented the report May 9 telling councillors that a major roadblock is the ability for developers to buy up enough connected land to redevelop. Another is environmental costs associated with tearing down existing structures - costs incurred to deal with things like lead paint and asbestos. Any specific proposal to buy land a parcel and carry out the work would need council approval.
The approved plan calls for establishment of a "revitalization reserve" in the city's land development fund. It sets a target of 30 per cent of all future land development sales to go to the new revitalization reserve.
The city would purchase a lot or several, potentially demolishing what's there. Then it would potentially rezone it, package it as one property with the hopes a developer will purchase it for a use the city would want, such as an apartment building.
That's what the city intended when it bought three lots 50 Street lots demolished the structures put them up for sale. They haven't sold.
The neighbourhoods covered by the plan include downtown, Old Town, Old Airport Road and Kam Lake. The city aims to redevelop sections of Old Airport Road into a mixed business and residential area.
The basis of the reserve follows from the city's 2010 Smart Growth plan that set specific targets for development. Smart Growth suggested development should be focused on revitalizing existing areas, such as downtown ahead of new neighbourhoods. But Humble said targets which haven't been met in downtown.
"We're grossly deficient in what we have targeted," Humble said May 9 at a municipal services committee meeting. "We're not making the investments to turn the corner."
Coun. Niels Konge suggested that day the missed development targets are because the demand in the community is for locations not already developed.
The city's plan doesn't matter if people don't want to buy the lots in the areas pegged for revitalization, Konge said.
Coun. Julian Morse said he wanted to see more analysis of what the city could do to provide incentives to redevelopment downtown.
Coun. Adrian Bell pointed to the three 50 Street lots as unfortunate examples of early attempts at land purchase for revitalization.
He said the city should have started with lots somewhere on the fringes of downtown and then when that worked tried elsewhere.
Coun. Rebecca Alty was the lone vote against the plan.
Alty couldn't be reached Monday to talk about her vote.
During a municipal services committee discussion last month, she worried about locking funds in a reserve when they may be needed elsewhere.
"I worry we're locking our money up without it really being required," Alty said.
