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Public opinion divided over future of Airdrie's Main Street

The future of what Main Street will look like appeared to be a sticking point during the City of Airdrie’s consultation process for its long-term downtown revitalization plan.

The future of what Main Street will look like appeared to be a sticking point during the City of Airdrie’s consultation process for its long-term downtown revitalization plan.

Community Growth Manager Stephen Utz was at the Airdrie City council meeting on July 5 to provide an update on the downtown revitalization project, which intends to improve the vibrancy of the city’s core over the next 20 to 30 years. He said public feedback the municipality has received about the draft downtown plan – which was released in the winter ­– demonstrated a divide in public opinion over the future of Airdrie’s Main Street.

“This ended up being a very significant…item of great interest to the public,” he told council. “It certainly generated a lot of interest and comments.”

Utz first presented the downtown draft plan to council on Feb. 1. The 85-page document outlines a 20- to 30-year objective to “establish the vision and principles for revitalization and to guide the redevelopment aspects of revitalization in a manner that is complementary to council’s aims,” according to the plan.

When addressing council back in February, Utz outlined how Airdrie’s downtown is currently “underutilized,” but has the potential and servicing capacity to support an additional 7,000 people and jobs. Currently, according to the plan, downtown Airdrie – as defined by boundaries set out in the draft plan – is home to just 432 residents and 1,898 jobs. Revitalizing downtown is one of the current council's priorities.

With the downtown plan back on council's agenda on July 5, Utz explained that after the City published a rendering of what Airdrie's future downtown could ultimately look like on social media, some residents expressed concern about how the image depicted Main Street. The City’s conceptual rendition included single traffic lanes with roundabouts, wider sidewalks and gathering spaces.

He explained the reason for that rendition was the feedback from downtown visioning exercises the City conducted from 2017 to 2019.

“At the time, the participants that came out and engaged with us indicated that was something that was important to them – to have a more ‘complete’ street and a new way of looking at Main Street,” Utz said. “However, this does appear to be an area that requires further community conversation.”

According to Utz, about 90 per cent of the 222 emailed comments the City received during the public consultation process from February until April 30 were about Main Street, with some residents expressing dismay that the road would be reduced to a single lane in each direction. A reduction in parking was another area of frustration for some commenters.

“Clearly, this was an image that resonated with people,” he said. “There was a lot of support for the type of image and the conceptual design for the downtown plan.

“That being said, not all of it was specifically positive – we received a nearly equal divide in terms of those who said, ‘This is something we like,’ and others who said, ‘This is something we do not like.’”

After Utz’s presentation, council accepted the report for information. However, Mayor Peter Brown expressed concern that current property owners along Main Street would have to foot the bill for future redevelopments depicted in the renderings, such as the addition of apartment buildings or condos overhead of storefronts.

“I'm curious, what degree of investment is the expectation from the City's resources, and what are we budgeting for something like this, in order to achieve what somebody's comment is?” he said. “We don't know the cost and we don't know if the changes we're showcasing on the diagram is actually possible.

“When I look at that slide, it looks awesome, but it's not achievable on the left because that's not what [the current buildings there] designed for. I'm not saying I'm against any of this – I just want to see how it would work and how that balance of the ying and yang would come together to make this vision a reality.”

Utz replied stacking residential units on top of pre-existing businesses downtown would likely only be pursued on vacant lots or storefronts.

Moving forward, he told council the City will be using the feedback from the public to continue editing the downtown draft plan. He said the current version will be available for feedback until Sept. 1, after which the City will continue to make revisions based on the comments received.



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