Council approves disputed Westerra neighbourhood in city’s west

REGINA – In an additional city council meeting Monday evening, council voted in favour of moving ahead with a proposed new neighbourhood plan west of the city.

The Westerra neighbourhood plan, a proposal from Harvard Developments and Forster Projects could soon be home to 7500 residents, as well as numerous businesses.

However, some delegations spoke to concerns about developing a residential area so close to an industrial one.

“Right now we have over 200 trucks that flow in and out of that area weekly and it’s a major traffic concern, not including our large agricultural equipment that we also have. That’s slow traffic going in and out of that area that we believe is obviously a very major impact on this development,” said Stephanie Yang with the Brandt Group of Companies.

Mayor Michael Fougere responded: “We’re only proposing to develop the first part of that development. There’s lots of time to discuss that. We’re asking for discussion between the parties to continue on and part of coming forward to council is discussion between the parties as to what they see is good or bad.”

Now that council has amended the official community plan to include Westerra, developers can go ahead with phase one of the project. A timeline on that hasn’t been set yet.