Every few moments, under the sunny, warm skies at the corner of 90 Avenue and 16 Street SW, at an entrance to the Glenmore Landing plaza, you could hear a car horn honk, then a hearty cheer.

Area residents, many clad in yellow shirts highlighting their cause, stood around a proposed land-use sign, erected in the area as notice there was an application to change the land use to allow for a series of towers in a massive redevelopment of the area. They waved and cheered to those articulating their support with a honk as they passed by.

The group was celebrating a temporary victory of sorts, as Calgary city council earlier in the day denied a land use redesignation at the site, thus halting redevelopment plans for the time being.

Lesley Farrar, one of the founding members of the Glenmore Landing Preservation Group, said it’s been a two-year struggle that finally bore fruit. It’s a redevelopment process she believes was flawed from the very beginning.

“This land never went to public tender. They were going to put 8,000 people on the doorstep, on the shorelines of our drinking water without doing a biophysical impact analysis,” she said.  

“It’s simply unacceptable. You can’t do this to our parklands. You can’t do this to our drinking water.”

City councillors had heard that 8,000 people would have been at the full build-out, perhaps two decades or more away. In that time, certain levels of construction would have triggered ongoing infrastructure upgrades, at the expense of the developer.  Further, the Biophysical Impact Assessment (BIA) was a required element for this initial phase of 1,100 units, before any development permit was issued and any construction began.

Councillors also heard from water services that there would be no impact on Calgary’s drinking water, as runoff would be dealt with through stormwater management, and that there were engineering tools that could account for the high water table on an underground parking structure.

Lack of representation

Pump Hill resident Kevin Taylor said that he doesn’t feel as though Ward 11 Coun. Kourtney Penner represented their collective voices at council. He said that she had met multiple times with the developer but only once with their group.

“That’s disrespectful, and she could have had a chance. She’s been invited to all of our community associations meetings and hasn’t attended one in over a year,” he said.

Several public presenters directed their frustration over the project at Coun. Penner, sometimes making personal remarks, deviating from specifics over the land use at hand.

Outside council chambers Tuesday, Coun. Penner said that she was being criticized for her role on the project long before the public hearing meeting.

“I didn’t just take a beating during public hearing. I have been taking a beating for 19 months behind the scenes, and I’ve been very quiet about it,” she said.

“I have been shamed, I have been belittled, I have been threatened. I have been called names, none of which any of you want to hear. So, when we talk about respect for professionals and respect for elected officials, this has been the slowest Band Aid rip, and it has really hurt. And some of my colleagues gave in to that today, and I am more hurt by my colleagues than I am by the public.”

Penner wasn’t sure how the project would move forward from here. The proposed land use and sale of the City-owned lands happened concurrently.

“I’m going to have to go back and talk to administration about what this means for the land sale that council approved,” Penner said.

“I honestly don’t know. The sale clause would have had a closing termination date, so we would have to extend that. So, there is a lot up in the air.”

Not against development, group says

Throughout the public hearing, several of the area residents opposed to this particular version of the RioCan redevelopment of Glenmore Landing said they weren’t opposed to any development.

Many said that “responsible development” was important.

Earlier, Taylor said that responsible development starts with RioCan sticking with the 10-acre site the commercial area currently sits on before spreading out to the parkland area around it.

In January, during the land sale disposition conversation, city admin noted that because of the area topography, it would be much easier to work with the land as a continuous parcel rather than try to develop it separately.

When asked what responsible development at the site looked like, Farrar was reluctant to say. She said they wanted to savour the day’s win before thinking about what lay ahead.

Farrar did say whatever comes next, they want real engagement. They want the city studies to be made easily accessible for independent review. She said the scale of the development would likely come down to what a full BIA revealed.

“Ideal to me, is something you can’t see from the (Glenmore) reservoir parklands. To continue with that legacy, if you’re on the parklands today, you don’t see strip mall, that’s beautiful,” she said.

Their group will stick together to see what comes next, Farrar said. It’s a committed band of citizens ready to find a positive way forward.

“I don’t like to think of it as fighting. I like to think of it as working together,” she said.