At a special meeting of Rocky View County (RVC) council on Feb. 1, councillors voted to reject the application of the Highmark development group that would have seen the construction of a new development in the Bearspaw area of RVC. The application was rejected in a unanimous vote of 7-0.
The decision comes after two weeks of council hearing from the development team and unhappy residents who were opposed to a proposed development on a 1.1 square kilometre piece of land on the corner of twelve Mile Coulee Road and Highway 1a in Bearspaw.
Administration recommended the plan to council, which would have seen nearly 900 housing units and 50 acres of retail, entertainment, and business units built in the Bearspaw area.
The County received hundreds of letters of opposition from residents opposed to the Ascension development, and this week council watched an hour and a half of videos from Bearspaw residents who also are in opposition to the development.
Division 3 Coun. and Reeve Crystal Kissel voiced her opposition to the development plan and said that “It’s our responsibility to not overburden a community at capacity.”
Kissel said she was grateful that the development team had actually heard the concerns of residents, but still believed that the urban density of the proposed development was too high.
Many of the concerns from last week's special council meeting were about the potential impact a new development could have on the capacity of Bearspaw area schools, as well as the challenge an increased urban density would pose to residents' favoured country-residential lifestyle.
Kathy Oberg, a representative of the Highfield development group, said in her planned rebuttal of residents' concerns that the Ascension conceptual scheme had been approved by council a few years ago and that the development team had done their best to ensure Ascension matched the country-residential lifestyle of Bearspaw.
“Change is difficult for all of us and it’s clear [people] love their community,” said Oberg. “We feel like we have a made in Rocky View plan.”
Oberg claimed that Highfield made an outreach effort to the school divisions that cater to students in the Bearspaw area, and that both school divisions said that they did not believe new schools were necessary in the proposed development area.
Division 1 Coun. Kevin Hanson agreed with the concerns of the density numbers but admired the attempt made by the development team's experts to create a transition from county-residential density to city density.
“I like the transition attempt and the attempt to manage the topography, however there are some shortcomings [with the application],” said Hanson.
“This application is not country-residential,” said Division 4 Coun. Samanntha Wright, who also stated her opposition to the application.
Before the vote, Kissel said that the land in question was going to be developed at some point, and that the residents who had shown up to oppose the development in person and through letters and videos, had to live with that reality.
“We want developers to feel welcome,” said Kissel. “But let's make sure [applications] fit with the country-residential lifestyle that we’re selling.”
Serving as chair of the special meeting, Division 2 Coun. and Deputy Reeve Don Kochan, said that the concerns of Bearspaw residents could be heard loud and clear, and that the priority of council is to ensure the community maintained their country-residential lifestyle.
In the original application put forward by the development team, it claimed that the Ascension development would prove to be a net fiscal benefit to the County. However, when asked by Kochan to clarify how that would be, Byron Riemann, the executive director of operations for the County, said that the study that had produced that claim had been done by the applicant and not the County.
“When you look at net fiscal benefit…how’s the value to the community expressed?” asked Kochan to his fellow councillors.
Kissel, who represents part of the Bearspaw area, said that she hoped the community would accept that there would be development in the area one day. However, Kissel remarked that any future application would have to seriously consider the country-residential lifestyle that is beloved by so many area residents.
“We are not the city and we do not want to be the city,” she said.
