Significant changes to development plans for Riverside will go to a public hearing in March.
Some residents who specifically moved into the area to back onto a large neighbourhood park space are disturbed to find a school site is now being contemplated for that site. On Monday, St. Albert city council gave first reading to proposed amendments to the Riverside area structure plan (ASP) and land use bylaw and set a public hearing date for March 2.
Select Engineering made the application for amendment on behalf of Genstar Development Company in June, after holding a public open house in April, which 44 people attended. Much of the public input included in city council’s agenda package centered on concern about a “beautiful, functional park” being considered to be home to a future 3.8-hectare school site at the corner of Riverside Drive and future Rankin Drive.
“To say that I am disappointed is an understatement,” wrote resident Nancy Robert to council. “I believe that changing the ASP so significantly as to change the character of the neighbourhood, after residents have paid for their lots (at prices reflective of neighbourhood amenities promised) and built their homes, is at best unfair and at worst unethical.”
Another resident who submitted comments, Melissa McKay, has five children and said bringing a school behind her house would create issues of “noise, litter, and lack of concern for safety.”
“I would have never built in this location if I knew I was going to back onto a school,” McKay wrote. “We were promised a park.”
Many residents commented on the current lack of park space, and said if the second school site was approved it could end up sitting as an unused muddy field for over a decade, as school build outs can be long and arduous processes.
Another controversial proposed change to the neighbourhood plan is to create an east to west thoroughfare that would connect with Mission Ave, opening up access to Grain Elevator Park.
Robert said this would essentially create a bypass for other neighbourhoods between Ray Gibbon Drive and the downtown core.
Overall proposed density for the neighbourhood would stay the same, but medium density residential would be concentrated in a central Neighbourhood Activity Centre on McKenney Ave. Currently, medium density is dispersed throughout the neighbourhood.
A new commercial site is also proposed within the Neighbourhood Activity Centre and would increase the area of commercial use from 3.8 to 5.7 hectares.
City council is set to hear from the public on the proposed amendments March 2, after which they will debate and vote on the proposal.
