Edmonton city council has approved rezoning for a proposed high-density, low-rise condo building at 76th Avenue and 115th Street, but not before hearing from several Belgravia residents concerned about the plan at a public hearing Monday.
An open house was held in November, where Niche Development said feedback for its project was positive, but there were concerns about the building’s size, design, amenities and effects on traffic in the area.
Aerial view of proposed rezoning area in Belgravia at southwest corner 115th Street and 76th Avenue. (City of Edmonton)
The Belgravia Community League raised those same issues at the public hearing.
“The building is crowding the street,” said Marcel Huculak, a member of the Belgravia Community League.
“It’s losing opportunity to make a good front yard space for people to have an animated street and interact with the street, having children and stuff playing in those front yard spaces, and also to have more eyes on the street when you have more people in the front of their units.”
Unclear communication
Jeanette Boman is a former member of the community league and has lived in the neighbourhood for 35 years.
She said she is frustrated by the lack of “meaningful consultation” and collaboration that would have allowed the details to be sorted out before the public hearing.
“The design was there,” she said. “[The developer] imposed it on us right from the beginning and there was never a change to it.”
Huculak added said consultations with the developer felt one-sided. There were meetings between the developer and the league, then the developer went to city administration to negotiate.
“We were completely cut out of the negotiations,” he said. “We kind of felt like we got the rug pulled out from under us.”
Calls for geothermal guarantee
The community league isn’t opposed to the high-density concept, but it wants the developer to be more specific. Boman said the community wants a guarantee of Niche’s promises to include energy-saving initiatives, such as geothermal heating.
“[The developers] are asking for such an increase in density without really clear reasons other than it seems to be connected with their need to cover geothermal, solar — and that’s not written in their application,” Boman said.
“So we’re not even sure that’s what we’ll get in the end. We’re not sure that geothermal can handle this size of a unit.”
Working together
Despite the rocky consultation process, Huculak and Boman said the league is still willing to work with the developer and city officials.
“What I’d like to see is that council will hear our frustration at not having been heard,” Boman said. “We just want to be part of the solution rather than just against the current plan.”