More than 60,000 parcels within 600 metres of Calgary Transit LRT or Max BRT zones will be downzoned come Aug. 4, despite being where blanket rezoning opponents suggested greater density.

The full repeal of citywide rezoning, as approved by council, will come later this summer, without a formal replacement framework before council.

In two months, 306,774 of 308,975 parcels zoned R-CG, R-G, or H-GO across Calgary will be blanket downzoned to R-C1, R-C2 or similar low-density districts, according to information provided by the City of Calgary.

Of those, 27,990 parcels fall within 600 metres of an LRT station, while 60,536 parcels are within 600 metres of an LRT, BRT or MAX BRT station.

“These numbers are also subject to change due to ongoing Notice of Motion (NOM) processes, development permit approvals overturned at appeal, and the volume of rezoning applications currently before the City that qualify for exemption from downzoning,” read an explanation from the City of Calgary.

The 600-metre zone is a key marker in the City of Calgary’s internal policy framework, the Transit-Oriented Development implementation strategy. It represents a zone that translates to a “comfortable” eight-minute walk to a station, according to the City of Calgary.

During the citywide rezoning repeal public hearing, many of the speakers who were in favour of a repeal suggested that density should be in the so-called “nodes and corridors,” and in areas with close proximity to transit.

Now those areas will be rezoned back to mostly single-family sites.

When asked if it would have been easier to just keep those 60,000+ parcels upzoned, given the desire to have more density in those neighbourhoods, Mayor Jeromy Farkas, who ran on a repeal and replace for citywide rezoning during last fall’s campaign, said no.

“It was the blunt instrument of the repeal to restore the trust in the process,” Farkas told LWC.

“Council needed to rip that band aid off to go back to the way that things were in order to be able to build up from that point.”

He said while it might have been more efficient to dial back the “11 out of 10 on the intensity” back to a five or six by keeping R-CG in transit zones, Farkas felt that citizens needed to be brought along from the start in a trusting process.

Schmidt pitched H-GO in ‘nodes and corridors’

Ward 8 Coun. Nathan Schmidt said that he’s having a hard time finding a connection with where the city wants to go on density.

During the repeal debate, he put forward an amendment that would have kept roughly 3,000 H-GO parcels intact in identified nodes and corridors. He said it failed because fellow councillors thought there needed to be more public engagement on it.

“My understanding was that engagement happened on that, which is why they were rezoned,” he said.  

“The engagement occurred as part of the Local Area Plans it was connected to. So that’s where I’m stuck right now, is we’re talking about engagement, but we need to figure out what we mean by engagement.”

Schmidt said sometimes people get wrapped up in the idea of engagement being that they get what they want out of it.

“I think a trap we fall into with engagement is, is it the quality of engagement that’s the problem, or is it that people are disagreeing with an outcome?” Schmidt said.

“Because outcomes are not necessarily completely tied to engagement. Engagement doesn’t mean you get your preferred outcome. We need to figure that out.”

Still, he thinks these lots within the 600 metre transit zones should have been kept. Again, based on the way the vote went, not all councillors agreed.

“Again, it’s us being clear about what our intentions are, and I don’t think we have clarity around that right now,” he said.

“60,000 lots is a lot of work, and what that tells me is that something to get us to that point, if that’s where we want to go, needs to come out of the Calgary Plan, because that will give us a citywide framework for how that operates.”

The Calgary Plan is an overarching municipal planning and development document that combines the former Municipal Development Plan and the Calgary Transportation Plan. A draft of that document is expected to come to council sometime in June.

Proper community consultation is key

Robert Lehodey with Calgarians for Thoughtful Growth, a group opposed to the blanket upzoning, said that he’s already seen significant densification happening around the southwest Calgary community of Haysboro. It’s being done around the nearby LRT station.

He said it’s all been done in consultation with the community.

“The point is, is that with consultation and communication with affected communities, densification around LRT stations ought to and can be built,” he told LWC.

He understood that not every community would be on board with greater density around their neighbourhood LRT or even Bus Rapid Transit stations – even if that’s where many Calgarians see density needed.

“How you square it, to answer your question, is communication with affected communities,” he said.  

“People understand that we need densification, and people understand that it makes sense to do it around LRT stations, and people get that.”

Not all see that as a viable path without a plan in place to do it.

Willem Klumpenhouwer with the group More Neighbours Calgary, who supported the citywide rezoning measure, said that reverting to the lowest density land use around transit stations seemed like Calgary is taking steps backwards on housing.

“This council and Mayor Farkas have talked a big game about wanting to focus on transit-oriented development, and this is doing the exact opposite,” he said.

Klumpenhouwer said that if Calgary wants transit-oriented development, they have to lean into it, and this is leaning away from it.

As far as the notion of a full repeal being a trust exercise for Calgarians, he said that part of the promise that Mayor Farkas made to citizens was that if there was a repeal, there would be something to replace it.

“I have not seen any other plans or ideas from the mayor to sort of solve this problem, and so, because we kind of have this council of gatekeepers, it’s going to be hard for me to see how you could advance what you’re looking for around transit-oriented development,” he said.

“So, it could just fall back to the original zoning, and nothing is done about it.”

More than just modest transit area density might be needed: Mayor Farkas

Mayor Farkas said that one of the other reasons they wanted to break it back down to the original zoning was because even greater density might be required in these areas to make up for the downzoning in other areas to single-family homes.

“If we’re not going to a blanket approach, which the voters have decided, and council has decided, then that means the intensity that we put around LRT stations, around major corridors, is much more than it otherwise would be, in order to be able to catch up for the lack of density that exists from the base districts,” he said.

Klumpenhouwer called that a “fallacy.” He said if even higher density was required around transit, it would require a land-use change either way.

“In both of those cases, to get more density around transit and lean into it, you are going to have to do some zoning changes around transit,” he said.  

“So, whether you change it from R-CG to something or you change it from what the new base district (is), you’re going to have to take that action either way.”

Mayor Farkas said that while he didn’t hear support for blanket rezoning, he did hear support for Local Area Plans. At the time of the interview, there were two Notices of Motion on the table to look at Local Area Plans – including one to boost resources to expedite more of them.

The push for additional LAP resources failed on the council floor, meaning the city will stay at the pace of completing one every two to three years.

Currently, there’s no new movement on a replacement, even to address areas around LRT stations. Klumpenhouwer said it’s logical to now bring changes forward to the Calgary Plan.

“My frustration comes from not having the ideas in place before the repeal, which was what the mayor promised in his campaign platform,” he said.

Until then, it’s easy to do nothing, or continue to kick the can down the road, Klumpenhouwer said.

“I really do think it’s worth continuing having this conversation, so that we can accelerate those changes, we can bring them forward, and we don’t have this long period of languishing in this exclusionary zoning,” he said.