By Troy Gillard

Public input sought

City pressed to decide future of Molly Banister Drive

Dec 10, 2019 | 5:23 PM

The City of Red Deer is being urged to finally make a decision on the future of Molly Banister Drive.

Debate has gone on for years as to whether the arterial roadway should be extended eastbound from Barrett Drive to connect to 40 Avenue.

The issue is again at the forefront now that Melcor Developments Ltd. has purchased the 115-acre piece of land east of Bower Place shopping centre for a new residential subdivision. Melcor bought the land this past summer from the Bower family, who had owned it for over 120 years.

Extending Molly Banister Drive to the east as currently proposed would require cutting through green space and along the Piper Creek ravine.

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Guy Pelletier, Melcor’s vice-president for the Red Deer region, says they don’t want to see that happen.

“It’s a pretty special piece of property, so we really feel an obligation to the future residents of it, and to the residents of southeast Red Deer, to make sure we protect that ravine as much as we can,” he says.

The city’s most recent study – out of several conducted over the past two decades – from 2006 looked at transportation needs up to a population of 188,000, a benchmark that was estimated to take 15-30 years to reach.

Pelletier says that much uncertainty over the future of the roadway makes planning a neighbourhood difficult.

“I would see the neighbourhood being fully developed within five to eight years. If you had to hold space open for a roadway that may or may not be built, that’s pretty challenging to develop a plan with that kind of question mark attached to it.”

The east end of Molly Banister Drive (rdnewsNOW/Troy Gillard)

Pelletier says an alternative would be to enhance 19 Street or 32 Street to provide traffic flow in and out of the development.

He adds that Melcor envisions a publicly accessible green space linking with existing trail systems from 19 Street to the Red Deer River.

While the project is not in the city’s current 10-year Capital Plan, scrapping Molly Banister Drive expansion does require amendments to the Municipal Development Plan and the East Hill Area Structure Plan. As such, a survey has been launched to gather public feedback from now until Jan. 13. The survey is available at reddeer.ca/surveys.

A recommendation is expected to go before city council in the second quarter of 2020.