CANMORE – A pilot project for selling excess Town of Canmore-owned road right-of-ways to further the building of affordable housing will have a first run.
Council approved moving forward with the intent to sell the roughly four metres wide and 59 metres long stretch of land in Teepee Town. The Town and developer ReNu Construction agree to a $480,000 conditional sale – and money potentially going to Canmore Community Housing (CCH).
“The rationale for the project is … housing for residents is a priority in our community. As we have talked about on a number of occasions, the Town is limited in its ability to ensure housing is for residents, given our regulatory framework,” said Whitney Smithers, the Town’s general manager of municipal infrastructure.
“Our main way to ensure housing for residents is through supporting CCH and other community housing providers and more civil instruments.”
The small piece of land near the intersection of Mountain Avenue and Hospital Place sits along a stretch of road that underwent construction last year and has two existing single-family homes.
Smithers noted the mostly secluded strip of public land is largely used for private parking, but it has little opportunity for other use due to its size and location.
“It’s a good opportunity to pilot this program. … The location lends itself to this pilot because if we go forward with it, and we decide not to narrow the right-of-way on the rest of the road, it doesn’t result in a wonky right-of-way alignment,” she said.
The Town’s land transactions policy regulates when the municipality buys or sells land. Council has to approve a motion to buy or sell land and any land sale should go to open market, but with the limited space, Town staff asked for an exception to the policy.
“It’s a lot of work and involves risk for the developer. It takes resources for Town staff from other initiatives that we could be advancing,” Smithers said, adding there were a lot of moving parts to make it work for all parties involved.
The staff report noted the policy allows council to grant an exception and sell municipal land if it’s “determined the exception will provide a clear community benefit.”
It noted road right-of-ways are typically wider than necessary in older areas of the community, with Teepee Town being 20 metres wide. In new subdivisions, the road right-of-way is a width of 15.3 metres, according to the Town’s engineering design and construction guidelines.
“There may be an opportunity for the Town to narrow some of these existing [road right-of-ways] and sell the remnant land parcels to adjacent landowners,” stated the staff report. “This could be particularly beneficial in parts of the community like Teepee Town, where redevelopment to higher densities is supported in Town policy.
“The remnant parcels have value for adjacent landowners as they can provide a larger footprint for development, supporting more density. The benefit for the Town is that the remnant parcels could be transferred in exchange for [affordable housing] in new developments, or for funds that could be redirected to CCH.”
Mayor Sean Krausert said he appreciated the creativity, particularly since it wouldn’t impact the road right-of-way, and “be a source of funding for non-market homes.”
Coun. Tanya Foubert highlighted a similar move was done for the Lawrence Grassi Middle School area redevelopment plan, which led to additional space for housing.
“It’s one of those solutions as we keep doing this work, we keep focusing on housing, we keep having these conversations and exploring ideas, solutions like this arise and we’re going to be able to see not just additional support for our initiatives. We’ll also empower our community and people who own land in our community to be part of the solution as well.”
The report highlighted ReNu Construction purchased the lots to turn the existing two single-family home units at 1405 and 1409 Mountain Ave. into a multi-unit development.
The staff report stated conversations with ReNu Construction had the developer interested in building smaller entry-level homes.
The staff report added CCH preferred to receive money from the sale rather than potential units in the project.
“Given the current ambitious building program of CCH, greater value was seen to be had in funding to support that program,” highlighted the staff report.
A land appraisal in June put market value at $600,000. The sale condition is contingent on approval of the development permit.
“We decided the discount of that value was appropriate because it’s not a developable parcel on its own, so were it not for this pilot project coming forward we wouldn’t even be pursuing and creating a legal parcel,” Smithers said. “It’s not just much use other than this. We’re fortunate to have a developer who’s willing to work with us on this because it does create some risk for them.”
Council still has to approve the lane closure, which will go to public hearing Oct. 1, and will then be sent to the province for ministerial approval. It will return for second and third reading in November, meaning development is pushed back to next year and the development permit process still has to take place.
A staff report on the process will return to council later this year.
“I think this is a very creative way of dealing with some of our parcels that really don’t benefit the Town and could benefit a landowner in terms of their development,” said Coun. Joanna McCallum.
