Commercial lot in Red Deer’s Laredo neighbourhood will be developed for residential

The Lancaster / Vanier East Neighbourhood Area Structure Plan (NASP) was originally adopted in 2011. Since then, the City says nearly all of the NASP has been developed except for the intersection in question.

The original NASP states, “the purpose of District Centres is to provide a local shopping centre that contains a mix of retail, service, and office uses anchored by a grocery store.”

The developer claims that they have put many efforts over the last decade but have not been successful in having the commercial area developed.

Administration states some challenges leading to the lack of commercial development include other major commercial nodes already having been developed since 2011, different economic conditions, and changes to the City’s servicing concepts making the southeast quadrant more costly to develop. The City added that Red Deer residents are adequately served by the current amount of grocery stores, especially with the slowed population growth.

As a result of these facts, the developer now wants to take the area and reconfigure it to accommodate a range of low to medium density residential developments.

The City says the portion of road that is proposed to be closed and disposed of is no longer required as the intersection has been redesigned to be a roundabout instead of a grade separated intersection. The closed road can be sold back to the developer, Melcor, and utilized for residential development.

A referral was sent to 128 landowners within 100 metres of the area and received five written comments. While two were in support of the proposed changes, another two suggested that they would like to see the area retained as a natural area. Administration says that the original NASP did not reserve the area as a green or natural area and the overall NASP exceeds the minimum municipal reserve provision of 10 percent of the NASP lands.

One commenter objected to the removal of the commercial area and expressed concern about the possible traffic impacts from additional residential uses. Administration believes the amount of traffic generated by residential development is less than that generated by commercial.

Councillor Cindy Jefferies applauded the developer for meeting a need across the country of housing with lower price points.

—–

Download the rdnewsNOW mobile app on Google Play and the Apple App Store for all the latest updates on this and other stories.

by Alessia Proietti

Commercial lot in Red Deer’s Laredo neighbourhood will be developed for residential

What's Trending