Residents and property developers and builders will have their last chance to provide input on the City of Airdrie’s proposed Land Use Bylaw (LUB) when it comes to a public hearing during the council meeting May 2.
According to City Planner William Czaban, this final piece of the public engagement pie comes after nearly three years of consultation.
Airdrie’s LUB was originally drafted in 2005. Municipalities are required to have a LUB under the Municipal Government Act (MGA). The LUB is a key document the City uses to regulate the development of land and buildings within Airdrie.
“We have our policy documents that guide how planning decisions are made and how the city wants to grow. The LUB implements that, in particular the Airdrie City plan that was passed in 2014,” Czaban said. “It set up some broad goals and policies about how we should do development in the city and that bylaw is the main tool for implementing those policies and translating them into actual development standards.”
According to Czaban, the LUB maps the city and divides it into districts or zones with specific regulations about what can be built or developed.
“A big portion of the LUB is establishing what the districts are. The districts can be divided into different categories and we do that in the document,” he said. “The document will speak about residential districts or commercial districts or public districts and things of that nature. More specifically you have the actual individual districts such as R-1, which is the Single Detached Residential District.
“A LUB in Alberta is typically called a zoning bylaw in other provinces. As City staff we often use land use and zoning interchangeably.”
The City held open houses in October 2015 and March 2016 to collect input from residents and industry. According to Czaban, the type of feedback received varied according to the needs of the audience.
“For the developers and the builders they were looking much broader at the continuum of the districts, what they’re allowed to do in each of those districts and any issues or gaps between what the LUB was saying they could do and the types of product they had in their repertoire or were looking at adding,” he said.
For residents, the discussion focused more on things like regulations regarding things such as garages, home businesses and secondary suites.
“If I’m a homeowner in Airdrie, what are the things I really care about? How does it impact me and my home and my neighbourhood?” Czaban said.
The public component of the City council meeting begins at 6 p.m. on May 2 in Council Chambers at Airdrie City Hall. The public hearing on the LUB is the third item on the public agenda. The meeting is also live streamed on the City of Airdrie’s YouTube channel; however, anyone wishing to speak during the public hearing is required to be present in Council Chambers and is limited to speaking for a maximum of five minutes.
