Forming a new development plan for the city of Winnipeg is a critical but inevitable task. While flexibility is a requirement in creating a long-term planning document, civic organizations like the Manitoba chapter of the Urban Development Institute (UDI) has to be assured that the city is on track for the right direction.
The UDI represents residential, commercial and industrial land developers, as well as professionals in engineering, legal survey, banking, planning and the architecture. As a key player in the city and province, it’s not surprising UDI made a presentation during the July 14 public hearing in the proposed Our Winnipeg plan.
The UDI said at the outset that they support any plan or initiative that:
• Recognizes the importance of market trends and conditions.
• Helps in making development more sustainable.
• Is flexible, but adds certainty to the development process.
• Is equitable.
The UDI’s primary concern falls with the city’s 20-year plan that only identifies a 13-year supply of residential land— which in their words is illogical and misleading. One more concern they’ve pointed out— for the city to achieve growth, Winnipeg have to rely heavily on a theoretical supply of residential land including centers, corridors, downtown, redevelopment land, infill and transit-oriented development (TOD).
The bottom line is that the UDI ensures that the city takes cautious approach in focusing growth on unproven markets. The group encourages the city to take proactive approach in planning its land assets not a reactive approach. The city should not depend on developers to under take large-scale regional transportation and servicing planning which is a municipal responsibility that does not seen to be addressed in this plan.
When looking at the development of “New Communities”, it is essential to consider that much of this suburban land has servicing constraints or other restrictions to development such as fragmented ownership. Discussion on how these lands will be serviced must be provided.
The UDI’s Jerry Klein of Genstar Development Company made a submission on Our Winnipeg on airport area development. “Genstar is a major stakeholder in the CentrePort lands and owns approximately 10 percent of the CentrePort Land. The intent and objectives as prescribed by CenterPort are to create an area that will be an inland port to promote intermodal facilities for handling goods through road, rail, air and marine; a Foreign Trade Zone to promote international trade and ultimately to create and develop viable industrial and commercial uses within designated area”. While these stated objectives are of great merit and beneficial to the growth of the city, these employment lands are being planned by CentrePort to be totally void of providing any complementary residential land uses.
Based from the said objectives, the CentrePort plan is basically contradicting to the philosophy and objectives being promoted and recommended by the city of Winnipeg Public Service in its Our Winnipeg document. According to section 011 City Building— “Create Complete Communities (which) need to support a range of options for living, working and playing. The daily necessities of life should be within reach…, (and) Provide Options for Growth. It will mean opportunities for more mixed-use areas, combining residential with retail, office and light industry.”
Two final points raised by UDI were that the city has to be more willing to look at the entire Capital Region in the context that current boundary issues should not be viewed as set in stone, and that more clarification from senior city planners would be helpful in determining what exactly they mean by Complete Communities.
Morever, UDI expects to be directly involved in developing what the city refers to as an “Implementation Toolbox” and a
“Complete Communities Checklist,” since they will be the ones creating these complete communities
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