City council will be asked to approve a new development in southwest Edmonton that’s about as far out to the fringes of the city as you can get without leaving it.
What’s proposed by Beaverbrook Developments for Keswick — and which has the support the city’s planning staff — is to convince city council to mash up the zoning rules of the past and to create residential and commercial all mixed together.
“What we’ll be asking council for support of is just the zoning that will enable us to then go to the retailers and the residential purveyors and then come up with a site plan,” said Jodie Wacko, Beaverbrook’s president.
This would be the very first development in the area. It’s deep south off 170 Street, which is the extension of Terwillegar Drive, at 28 Avenue SW, approaching what will become a reconfigured Ellerslie Road.
“This area was always planned to have a certain level of commercial and a certain level of residential to support it, so it was kind of an approved plan that was in place,” senior planner Beatrice McMillian said. “Now they’re just moving the pieces around a bit.”
“We believe that even in the suburban areas of town, a more integrated and mixed-use type of commercial and residential developments are the way the future is going,” Wacko said.
“This zoning allows us to have some flexibility as we go out and test the market.”
That way, as things evolve over the next five years, if corrections are needed in the mix, they don’t have to keep coming back to city council for approval.
“Our experience has always been that Murphy’s law is always prevailing when you’re trying something new. If you’re out by a corner that should have been residential instead of commercial…
“This mixed use allows us to arrange stuff appropriately as we go out and market it and find people that want to set up businesses here and buy homes here.”
The concept is to have some buildings as residential only and others as a mix of commercial and residential, all ranging from four to six storeys.
“They’ve basically replaced it by, I’d say squatting the height down, and spreading it over all of the other sites,” McMillan said. “So you get the same number of units but in a little different building format.”
East of there, 28 Avenue will eventually have a bridge to get over Whitemud Creek to give another east-west access point into greater Windermere.
Wacko said it’s a new way of proposing a development.
“We’re literally starting with the zoning first, and then we’ll go and say, ‘Who’s interested in this?’ now that we have development rights and how can we best develop it out?”
The proposal will be in front of city council on Monday, Jan. 22.
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