Council conundrum: Redevelopment or protection of old neighbourhoods

By Medicine Hat News Opinon on November 22, 2018.

Two issues that are heading to the city council table and public hearings next month are the latest in a long series of development tension in Medicine Hat, where a spiderweb of civic priorities has turned more into a tug-of-war and inaction.

The city’s guiding planning principles have long stated that infill development is a prudent strategy for tackling mounting infrastructure costs, taxation and utility charges.

In practice, however, it’s been a bit of a dog’s breakfast when council is presented with choices to add population density or protecting existing neighbours, as well as create more compact suburban development or provide new homebuilders the large lots they request.

Next month Connaught-area residents are expected to protest a proposal that would allow new town homes near the corner of College Drive and Primrose Drive. Their gist seems to centre on protecting the quiet nature of the residential area.

On the same night, council will debate the Riverside Redevelopment plan that includes a call for new infill housing standards to be developed and a specific framework to balance the rights of existing homeowners and developers looking to teardown and build new.

There’s no shortage of recent examples when council weighed concerns about existing home values over redevelopment projects that fell within the goals of the city’s guiding development plan.

At other times, economic growth is cited when council approves projects despite neighbourhood concerns.

Two years ago, council ruled new houses built on a parking lot would lower the value of homes across the street, not to mention the quality of life in the upscale neighbourhood of Parkview.

This month councillors lauded an appeal board decision that overruled their own planning department’s ability to restrict front garages in established neighbourhoods.

It’s all in a vein of boosting “infill development,” which locally comprises only the politically sellable idea of building large homes to replace smaller ones in an established community.

That definition checks only one of many possible boxes.

It does boost tax assessment by adding new, higher value housing stock, and that’s desperately needed in Medicine Hat, where a structural budget gap still sits at about $15 million each year.

However, trading one smaller home for one bigger home does little to decrease utility rates over the entire customer base.

Only adding more customers on existing lines will do that, and that won’t happen without densification, like adding duplexes or subdividing lots.

The city’s planning department says as much in the preamble of its current work to update the city’s overarching Municipal Development plan in 2019.

Adding large homes isn’t even the most effective way to increase the assessment base.

Simple math tells us that a $500,000 home built on a wide, inner city lot isn’t worth as much in total as two $300,000 homes built on a subdivided lot.

Yet, duplexes though are the greatest fear of concerned in-place homeowners. They imagine boxy, rental units, and they’re not always wrong.

They’re not always right, though, but to force developers to build quality buildings that add to a community requires development guidelines and the power to enforce them.

It’s clear that homeowners want the city fathers to clamp down on new development in their area while boosting it elsewhere, and let the residents of Elsewhere deal with it.

It’s also not easy to simultaneously promote redeveloping older neighbourhoods and protecting older neighbourhoods.

It’s not black and white, but city council needs to decide on a long-term planning strategy and stick to it, not only in next month’s contentious hearings, but in next year’s update of the municipal development plan.