Calgary city council will consider a land-use change at the site of a former southeast mobile home park, paving the way for a new 581-unit development.

The land-use change coming to the Public Hearing Meeting of Council on Jan. 14 requests a change from commercial to multi-residential and includes the outline plan for a new residential area.

The plan consists of seven buildings of up to five storeys, with two vehicle access locations and bus laybys along Blackfoot Trail (Bus route 106). A new signalized, all-turns intersection will be needed along Blackfoot Trail for the development.

The Blackfoot Mobile Home Park site was closed in April 2023. A development permit for stripping and grading of the area was approved in the summer of 2024, with a development permit submitted July 6, 2024. The item was reviewed at the Calgary Planning Commission Nov. 14, 2024.

In that meeting, Commissioner Nathan Hawryluk, and later Commissioner Chris Pollen, asked why greater density wasn’t sought, especially given that the area, according to the Local Area Plan, was designated Neighbourhood Flex and could accommodate buildings up to 12 storeys.

Jessica Karpat, principal of planning with Quantum Place consulting, responding on behalf of their client Cedarglen Living, said her client’s core business is stick frame construction (wood). Adding more density to that location didn’t make sense from an economic perspective.

“We have several buildings on site, from kind of a site plan perspective, and if we were to increase the intensity, either via storeys or say, adding another building, we would have to add an additional exit, even if it’s just an emergency access and egress,” Karpat told commissioners back in November.  

“That additional exit would push us over, and that economics of just that additional exit didn’t make sense for the project.”

Community push for light commercial

Hawryluk was also concerned, as was the Acadia Community Association, that the applicant wasn’t considering a mixed-use project, with some commercial added into the area.

“I guess it raises the next question though, of are we forcing people to be in an incredibly auto-dependent location?” He asked.  

“I mean a walk to Superstore, Walmart is about 30 minutes, and you have to traverse your way through car dealerships and parking lots. The 106 bus route runs every 40 minutes on weekdays.”

Karpat said that to the north is a business park with small retail offerings, including restaurants and coffee shops. Deerfoot Meadows is a short distance away and offers a wide range of commercial opportunities. There’s pedestrian access across Blackfoot Trail into Acadia, where there is other light commercial, she said.

“When we are looking at the full picture of commercial viability, retail needs assessment, this just did not make sense from either a small, local commercial perspective or kind of a larger mixed-use site,” she said.

Ward 11 Coun. Kourtney Penner said overall it comes down to the economics of construction. If you go over six storeys, it requires heavier-duty builds, which costs more. Further, the added density requires another egress location.

On paper, Penner said it might be good to go higher, however, it doesn’t always pencil out on the bottom line.  The developers are the experts in what projects will work and what won’t on a given site, she said.

“When you actually get into the development constraints, sometimes the feasibility is there and sometimes it isn’t,” she said.

Further, Penner said that if the City stands in the way of building 581 more units at the location, the site may sit vacant.

“If we nitpick it being perfect, is that we don’t get a development and then it just sits there, and then we have stagnant land that offers no tax uplift,” she said.

“At some point, concessions have to be made to get something rather than nothing. If we constrain something so fully with all of these idealistic things, then we don’t get product.”