The City of Airdrie’s Municipal Development Plan (MDP) is being put through a consultation phase until Aug. 15 with the hope that it will be ready for first reading by City council by September.
Members of the Airdrie Chamber of Commerce, builders and developers and the Urban Development Institute have been invited by the City to give feedback on a draft of the MDP.
Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Lorna Hunt was with the chamber when the City’s last MDP was released in 2004, but this year, the chamber and its members are much more involved.
“We’re trying to really open up more communication with City Hall,” said Hunt. “This is a great opportunity for us to use our contacts and get feedback to help out the (City of Airdrie) planning department.”
The MDP was originally slated to be included in the AirdrieONE Sustainability Plan which was approved by council on March 5, 2012. AirdrieONE is a set of guiding principles for city staff to follow to ensure the sustainability of the city.
Efforts were made by the City’s planning and development department to incorporate the MDP into the AirdrieONE sustainability plan but the idea was scrapped as the document would have become too convoluted according to Tracy Corbett, manager of planning and sustainable development with the City.
“Trying to include the MDP into the AirdrieONE plan was making the sustainability plan difficult to understand and it was confusing,” said Corbett.
The MDP will instead work in conjunction with the AirdrieONE plan; where the MDP is focused on land base, population and land use and the AirdrieONE plan looks at managing growth and maintaining a fiscal balance.
“The point of this new plan is to acknowledge newly annexed land and for our design to align with the AirdrieONE plan,” said Corbett.
She went on to explain that the new plan is not taking the city in a radically new direction, but rather identify what the expectations are for the design of the city going forward.
For starters, Airdrie currently sits at 83 per cent residential properties and City officials are working towards bringing that number down to create a 75/25 split between residential and non-residential.
This doesn’t mean that there will be a freeze put on housing construction, but rather more focus will be put on attracting businesses to Airdrie to manage economic development and long-term fiscal sustainability.
“We’re going to be looking in greater detail at neighbourhood design and how we can create sustainable communities,” said Corbett.
Corbett and her team must wait for the completion of the transportation master plan and the drainage (sewer) master plan before bringing it before council, as they will both be included in the MDP.
City council will have the final say in the plan and they will ultimately decide whether the plan needs to take a different direction or if any policies need to be strengthened, added or removed.
Ideally, Corbett would like to have the first reading of the plan completed before the upcoming municipal election in October in order to avoid any complications.
“Plans like this can become complicated if you’re trying to put it through two different councils,” said Corbett.
“You end up asking new people to wade through a lot of material that they may not be familiarized with.”
The deadline for feedback on the consultation draft of the MDP is Aug. 15, 2013 in order to give Corbett and the development department adequate time to re-work, add or remove anything from the plan before it is brought before council in September.
Public feedback on the document will be welcome after it comes before council.
