On May 14, 2024, City Council voted to approve citywide rezoning with amendments. Additional information will be shared on Calgary.ca/RezoningforHousing as it becomes available.

What does the citywide rezoning mean for the Chinook Communities Local Area Plan?

Approved local area plans, those currently underway, as well as all future local area plans must align with Council direction.  

Local area plans will align with Council’s rezoning decision to support rowhouses across local area plans. 

The lowest urban form category (Neighbourhood Local) combined with the lowest building scale category (Limited) already supports all homes 3 storeys or under. 

Since Council has decided (through the Citywide rezoning) where small-scale homes including single-detached homes, semi-detached homes, townhomes or rowhomes are appropriate, this is no longer a topic that we will engage on within the local area planning process. Moving forward, efforts will shift to helping people understand how citywide rezoning and the local area plans align. 

We’re planning and building our city now to ensure we remain a place where home is sustainable, diverse, accessible, equitable and liveable for everyone. We need to act now as we are quickly approaching a population of two million Calgarians.

Current initiatives include:

• Home is Here: The City of Calgary’s Housing Strategy: This strategy aspires to ensure that everyone living in Calgary has an affordable place to call home.
• City Building Program: This program of work, which includes the Calgary Plan, Zoning Bylaw, and Street Manual, will set the forward-looking direction, and provide clear and user-friendly policy and regulation for The City and our partners to guide growth, mobility, land-use and development citywide.
• Rezoning for Housing: As part of the Home is Here: The City of Calgary’s Housing Strategy this work will present to Council a proposal to rezone low-density residential areas to a base residential district that supports more housing options and improves affordability in all communities.

Learn more and get involved in these current initiatives focused on supporting the ongoing planning and building of our city.

A local area plan sets the vision for growth and change in a group of communities over the next 30+ years. A local area plan provides guidance and direction on development, investment and community improvements that residents, landowners, builders/developers, City Planners and Councillors can commonly refer to when new ideas are proposed for the area.

A local area plan will support your community as it changes by:

• Increasing predictability about how the area could change in the future.
• Responding to changing trends and demographics such as population decline, family composition, aging in place, housing preferences.
• Expanding housing choice to welcome additional people and increase population.
• Supporting local amenities and businesses through increased population.
• Informing decisions about reinvestment such as improvements to public spaces.
• Adding more homes, increasing bikeability, walkability and access to amenities and transit, as well as reducing the need to expand our city’s footprint all play a role in environmental sustainability.

Communities naturally change and evolve. Over time, trees and kids grow up, businesses change ownership and offerings, homes and buildings age. People choose to move, renovate or rebuild their homes or businesses to better suit their changing needs.

There is a stage in each community's life cycle when the choice to rebuild or redevelop homes and buildings becomes more and more frequent (generally as homes and buildings reach 50+ years). A lot of change within a short time can start to feel unpredictable or overwhelming. It's at this stage where it can be helpful to have a plan in place to guide decisions about how and where change, new development and community investment and improvements make sense in communities.

Creating a plan to help guide change within communities ensures that there's flexibility (for people looking to make changes), direction (to help guide new development when ideas are proposed), and certainty (for residents to know how their community may change in the future).

We're working together to create a local area plan to help ensure change happens in the right ways in the Chinook Communities.

Life cycle of a community

New communities tend to draw many young families and typically reach their peak population within the first 20 years.

Population begins to decline as children begin to move away from home.

Homes and buildings age and the population continues to drop or flatline. Schools and businesses often struggle to stay open.

The community is revitalized through private redevelopment and public reinvestment, bringing increased population growth and enabling local businesses and amenities to thrive.

The Chinook Communities Local Area Plan include Bel-Aire, Britannia, Elboya, Manchester, Mayfair, Meadowlark Park, Parkhill, Windsor Park, a south portion of Manchester Industrial, and a small eastern portion of Glenmore Park.

Planning Together for the Next 30 Years

We’re working together to create a local area plan for Bel-Aire, Britannia, Elboya, Manchester, Mayfair, Meadowlark Park, Parkhill, Windsor Park, a south portion of Manchester Industrial, and a small eastern portion of Glenmore Park.

What is a Local Area Plan?

A local area plan sets the vision for the evolution of the area over the next 30 years. It provides direction on future development and investment that residents, landowners, builders / developers, City Planners and Council can commonly refer to when new development and investment ideas are proposed.

Why Do We Need a Local Area Plan?

The city, communities and streets where we live and work have changed, are changing, and will continue to change. People renovate, rebuild, enlarge and modify spaces around them all the time. We need to make sure there’s room for people looking to make changes and provide direction to help guide decisions. We also need to provide guidelines for investment when change is proposed, and certainty for residents and businesses to know how their community may change in the future.

Chinook Communities - Plan Area Boundary Update

Based on the public feedback received in Phase 1, the Chinook Communities' boundary has been amended to include the 39 Ave. LRT Station and nearby area.

Conversations about where, why and how revitalization and redevelopment should happen are essential to ensure there's a plan in place to help guide future changes. Growth and change happen in a community with or without a local area plan.

Consumer demand, market forces, and other factors will drive change in the community. However, in areas with high demand that do not have a local area plan, developers will often have to undertake site-by-site land use redesignation / rezoning applications in order to build developments to meet demand for new housing and businesses. This site-by-site approach can create uncertainty for local residents, who don’t know where the next application will come from and what it will propose. It also creates uncertainty for developers, who don’t know for certain what types of proposals will be acceptable where. Without a local area plan, conversations about growth and change happen application by application, often in a manner disconnected from a wider vision. A local area plan helps create more certainty for everyone by outlining the general expectation for what scale and type of new development is appropriate where and what policies will help shape development that is proposed.

What We’re Talking About Now

We are currently in Phase 3 – REFINE, and we want to hear your thoughts on the Urban Form and Building Scale maps and community improvements.

Your input now will help to to refine the maps we are discussing on the appropriate building scales (heights/number of storeys) and uses (residential, commercial, industrial, mixed use, etc.) for growth within all areas of the plan.

What We’ve Discussed So Far

In Phase 2 – EXPLORE, we asked you to review the draft Vision and Core Values for the Chinook Communities that will help guide decisions about the evolution of the area over the next 30 years. We also discussed moderate to large-scale growth in the plan area. We encourage you to review the Phase 2 What We Heard Report and What We Did Report

Feedback provided by participants helps shape the local area plan as it is created.

Following each phase of engagement, the project team compiles and shares what was heard, highlights the key themes raised, and provides responses for how key themes were considered and addressed.

In addition to participant input, other key inputs are also considered to help inform the creation of the local area plan, as shown below.

Visit calgary.ca/Chinook and check out the "PAST ENGAGEMENT" tab to review What We Heard & What We Did Reports along with Engagement Summaries from each phase through the project.

The Municipal Development Plan (MDP) includes policies that direct industrial areas to remain predominantly industrial to support a strong and prosperous economy and should resist the encroachment of non-industrial uses (such as residential and commercial) into them. In addition to the direction in the MDP, recent analysis undertaken as part of the Industrial Growth Strategy and Industrial Action Plan highlights the importance and locational advantage, and proximity to downtown of the existing industrial lands within the Chinook Communities for emerging industrial trends (such as for last-mile goods delivery or smaller industrial users). With these considerations in mind, we will work with the public, businesses, and other City departments to understand how we could maintain and improve existing industrial areas within Chinook Communities and accommodate certain nonindustrial uses in strategic areas.

It is anticipated that the Chinook Communities Local Area Plan will be presented to City Council in winter 2025. In the meantime, while the draft Plan is being developed and until Council makes a decision on the proposed Plan, active land use amendment and development permit applications will be reviewed against existing Council approved policy plans, such as the Municipal Development Plan.

Those details are not in the scope of a local area plan; however, at the development permit stage details such as building design, site constraints, landscaping, parking, utilities and waste and recycling staging areas are discussed and carefully looked at. Privacy is also discussed as part of the design of the new development. For example, glass blocks or frosted glass can be placed when side windows are proposed. All development permits include the opportunity for the public to provide comments during the review of the proposal as well as to appeal the decision about the proposed development.

Most mature communities, especially those built prior to 1980, are below their historical peak population, so most communities are already designed to handle more people than live here today. Due to the decline in population and higher efficiency houses being built, there is now infrastructure capacity. This includes roads, transit stops, water and wastewater management, etc. to handle more types of housing.

That being said, through the local area planning process, we plan for reinvestment along with redevelopment. Chapter 3 of the local area plan (Supporting Growth) highlights key community improvements desired within the Chinook Communities. We are looking for feedback on community improvements now to ensure we are capturing all the ways we need to support growth and change in the area.

Feedback provided by participants helps shape the local area plan as it is created.

Input provided by the participants helps the project team understand perspectives, opinions and concerns throughout the all phases of the project. Input collected in each phase of the project helps influence and inform the concepts and policies that are created and refined throughout the process. Throughout the project, the project team will share what was heard, highlighted the key themes raised, and provided responses for how key themes were addressed and considered.

Although it would be a great outcome, the goal of public engagement is not to reach consensus or make everyone happy. Public engagement is about considering the input, ideas and perspectives of those who are interested in or impacted by decisions, before decisions are made. Participant input is an important part of local area planning, but is one of many areas of consideration. Other areas include: City policies, professional expertise, current context and trends, and equity which all factor into the ultimate decision-making process and concept development.

Public input provided in each phase of the engagement process is compiled, reviewed and considered as each chapter of the local area plan is created.

Review the What We Heard & What We Did reports from each phase of the project for details.