12 Thousand Acres Plan Unanimously Approved by Council
Date
August 15, 2018
Calgary, AB (August 15, 2018) This past June, the City of Airdrie Council unanimously approved the 12 Thousand Acres Plan (12K Plan) prepared by our Calgary Planning team and the City of Airdrie. The 12K plan is a non-statutory, functional-planning document intended to provide long range plans to guide the Council’s decision making on future development within the lands annexed from Rocky View County in 2012.
“This is an exciting opportunity for the Calgary office and the firm as a whole,” Associate Director and Practice Lead, Ben Lee, shares about working on the project. “One of the largest projects our office has worked on (to scale), the 12K Plan will shape and guide future planning documents for years to come. It’s a roadmap to development.”
The Plan encompasses 12,640 acres of land and is expected to provide the City with a 50+ year land supply that will accommodate the development of a targeted allocation of employment, lands, services, amenities, open space and housing. The Plan provides a comprehensive approach to managing growth that is attuned to the City’s strategic and economic development objectives.
Consisting of four major components, the 12K Plan lays the groundwork for how this development will happen. The goals of the project are to:
- Provide a general land use concept for the annexed lands
- Define future Community Area Structure Plan boundaries
- Provide general sequencing for future development within the project area
- Provide guidelines around what, where and how interim uses could be supported that would not adversely affect the City’s objectives and logical development sequence within the plan area
Public engagement was a major component when developing the 12K Plan to gather information and allow the community and stakeholders to provide their input and direction. The engagement took part in two phases; project kick-off, workshops, and meetings to discuss background information and assumptions with individual stakeholders that would be used in the creation of the draft plan; and public open houses with another round of meetings with individual stakeholders and residents in the project area to review the plan and make any necessary changes to the final draft document.
The 12K Plan provides the City of Airdrie with the framework to responsibly develop the land in the coming years in an effort to boldly propel the community forward. Airdrie continues to be one of the fastest growing cities in Canada and we are proud to be involved with shaping their future growth.
