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Back lane lighting not required in St. Albert

Council voted to amend an old motion after hearing from developers
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The back alley on Garden Crescent in Grandin is lit with street lighting, but residents say many of them have motion sensor lights as well. BRITTANY GERVAIS/St. Albert Gazette

Installing street lighting in back alleys will no longer be a requirement for developers in the city.

On Oct. 5, Mayor Cathy Heron brought forward an amendment to a 2016 motion that stated new back alleys had to be paved and include street lighting in the city's roadway design policy. After hearing from local developers, this amendment would remove the street lighting portion.

Council passed the motion unanimously. This means developers are no longer required to light up back lanes for new neighbourhoods. Instead, homeowners can buy and install motion sensor lights themselves.

"The priority here was about keeping home prices down," Heron said in an interview. "Safety is always a priority, but when you try to do a balance of the two and you don't have any evidence to say that (street lighting) changes the safety, but you have hard evidence that says it would increase housing prices, we chose affordability."

Michaela Davis, regional manager for Melcor and member of the Urban Development Institute (UDI) St. Albert chapter, spoke to council in favour of the motion.

While the industry was initially supportive of lane lighting requirements in 2016, installing permanent street lighting can be expensive and ineffective, she said.

"The costs and benefits of this solution just do not appear to make sense. There is no proven safety benefit to lighting the lanes," she said.

Developers wanted the ability to build back lane homes to create more starter-home options in the city's housing market. Permanent lane lighting could make those homes more expensive to build, she said. 

In St. Albert, Genstar is working on constructing 28 laneway home lots in their new Riverside development. Looking at one stage that has been designed and tendered, with lighting included, the additional cost per lot to install street lighting was around $1,400, said Courtney Jensen, chair of the St. Albert UDI chapter.

"It's going on the starter home, and it's a straight pass-through cost," Jensen said. "It's a really sensitive area of the market to add additional costs." 

All other municipalities in the Edmonton region do not install lighting in new lanes, according to a city backgrounder document.

Heron said she brought forward the 2016 motion to ease concerns over allowing back alley lane developments in St. Albert.

At the time, other councillors had safety and aesthetic concerns around adding back lanes to developers' toolbox, but doing so would add more affordable options to the city's housing market, she said. Incorporating lighting into back-alley design was thought to help increase safety, even though council didn't have a lot of data to back it up at the time.

"The unintended consequences of that was that it just jacked up the price by $1,400," Heron said. Installing street lights also came at a cost to the city to operate and maintain. 

During the council meeting, Coun. Sheena Hughes pointed out that with this change, there would no longer be any requirement for developers to light back alleys. Leaving them dark could result in unwanted activity, so she asked if the motion could require more affordable motion sensor lights instead.

"Having some level of a safety measure in lighting I think would still discourage people more than not," she said.  

Coun. Ray Watkins said the city doesn't need to make it a requirement as residents can be trusted to do this on their own.

"If people have a safety concern in their backyard, they can purchase a motion detector light and hang it up. I'm supportive of this the way it is," he said.

The city also cannot dictate what people do on private property either, Heron pointed out in an interview, but she said she has gotten assurances from some local home builders that they will install motion sensor lighting.

Grandin resident Elaine Reimer has lived in her home on Garden Crescent with a back alley for over a decade. She said she rarely has safety concerns with the alley, but if the street lighting wasn't there, she thought it could make a difference.

"People would feel like they could skulk around more, I'm sure," she said. 

Down the street, Lloyd and Sandra Darrington said they have motion sensor lights installed on their garage because the street lights don't light up the back alley enough. But they said they live in a safe neighbourhood, so they didn't install it with the aim of deterring crime.

"We're old and we like to see our footing, and that one light doesn't cover it," Lloyd said with a laugh. "When you're trying to get in the back through the alley, without the motion sensor lighting, it was really quite dark," Sandra added.

They said having street lights in back alleys for new developments would be a good idea, but they could understand the city's decision if doing so proved to be too expensive.

"It would be nice if the city could afford it, but I know they can't afford everything," Lloyd said.

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