The City of Calgary Main Streets land use re-designation (blanket re-zoning) initiative is intended to focus on active areas in the city that attract Calgarians to socialize, work, shop, dine, celebrate local events in proximity to LRT and important transportation routes. By encouraging new development and increasing the population in these main street areas through housing choice, the City felt that the vitality of local businesses, amenities and services would grow and be maintained.

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In November 2014, the City initially identified 24 main streets for evaluation and performed extensive consultation with main street users, industry stakeholder and economic experts, to propose planning solutions to promote the success of Calgary’s main streets.

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In April 2017, City Council selected Shaganappi’s 17th Avenue corridor (from 24th St to 33th St) as one of three streets (the others being in Bridgeland and Montgomery) for a new land use framework. There was no existing Area Redevelopment Plan in that location, and before the Main Streets initiative this area was comprised of a mix of individual land blocks varying from R-C1 zoning to M-C2 (or higher).

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When the City completed its broad consultation process in October 2016, Shaganappi realized that the nature of that consultation did not allow for adequate dissemination of the specific new zoning changes to affected adjacent parties. These interests involved predominantly R-C1 and R-C2 residential housing.

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In response, Community Association representatives met with the City’s Main Streets team in late October 2016, and together with City staff, hosted a community wide town hall with approximately 130 attendees in mid-November. The outcome of the town hall was a series of three spin out “street meetings” hosted by the CA. Our membership communication system, along with door knocking by our area resident reps was sufficient to ensure that these street meetings were representative and well attended with 20-40 people each.

 

Direct resident interaction resulted in a far stronger and sounder recommendation for Council to consider. Accordingly, there is broad support for the recommendations for 17th Avenue as made in the attached document and distributed to our community.

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A before and after Main Street zoning map is here: 2017 0508 Main Streets – 17th Ave Updated Zoning