This is a short update on the Riley LAP process, which is becoming even more concerning for our community. The City is developing a new Riley Local Area Plan (LAP) for our community. This will replace the Hounsfield Heights – Briar Hill Area Redevelopment Plan (ARP), which has guided the redevelopment of our neighbourhood since the 1980s. The City circulated their latest Phase 4 LAP draft online a few months back – look at https://engage.calgary.ca/Riley/Realize. Their plan, as it is, makes fundamental changes to our community, including six and four storey apartments permitted to replace single-family homes in a significant portion of our community, six storeys permitted below the Hounsfield Heights escarpment, and narrow infill homes permitted throughout.
The initial council IPC hearing about the Riley LAP was on October 16, and they made a motion that it go back to City Administration for more work to “Prioritize greater density around Transit Oriented Development (TOD) sites within the Riley Communities Local Area Plan”. The motion also included a clause about improving mobility planning. The full council unanimously passed this motion of referral on October 29. The scheduled public hearing on December 3 has been cancelled. Councillors had different motivations for approving the motion, and do not necessarily support the clause for even more density, but the City will do what the motion instructs, and fighting these changes will now be even more difficult.
Lions Park LRT station is the main TOD site discussed, and this motion instructs the City to add more density around our station. This very likely means they will propose twelve storeys in Hounsfield Heights and push apartments further into the community – exactly the opposite of what the citizens affected by these proposals have been saying. The Community Association has spoken about reasonable compromise and the effects on our community, but none of our concerns were heard.
Further, the Municipal Development Plan and Transit Oriented Development guidelines state that existing stable communities should be respected. The MDP says “ensure infill development complements the established character of the area and does not create dramatic contrasts in the physical development pattern”, but neither the current proposal nor suggested changes on referral do this. However, the City is also working on replacing the Municipal Development Plan with the “Calgary Plan”, and these concepts of considering context and respecting the citizens and communities that are already there do not appear to be included anymore…
If you receive this in time, please come out to the Community Association Annual General Meeting on November 28, to learn more about this issue and what we can do! Personally, I think it is grossly unfair and unreasonable to ignore context like this – we need to step up our lobby about context and respect – that everyone counts, and existing communities should not be thrown under the bus! Community members may wish to consider expressing their opinions directly to council ([email protected], [email protected], our councillor Terry Wong, and similarly for the rest of the 14 councillors – [email protected] etc.). We can discuss and answer questions at [email protected].
Beth Atkinson
Director – Land Use, Hounsfield Heights – Briar Hill Community Association
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