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By Emily Keller
GRANDE PRAIRIE CITY COUNCIL

City council approves third reading of rezoning request

Sep 9, 2019 | 5:13 PM

Grande Prairie City council approved the third reading of a rezoning request of several parcels of land in the Trader Ridge area at today’s council meeting.

The developer requested the city remove the commercial arterial district and reduce the zoning down to urban reserve.

Mayor Bill Given says the distinction between commercial and urban reserve zoning impacts land development.

“You wouldn’t be able to get a permit to build anything on urban reserve land, the development opportunities are very limited. So the developers essentially acknowledging that the lands he had requested will not be developed in the near term, and so he saw it as more appropriate to have those lands return to that urban reserve where if anybody wanted to develop anything they would have to come in for the appropriate zoning at that time.”

At the last council meeting, council did not approve the developers request to rezone the entire area, says Given.

“The area that council chose to rezone was limited to areas directly adjacent or attached to existing farmland. There was a significant discussion today about property taxes and the implication of this on property taxes, and that is purely speculative.”

Commercial development of Trader Ridge began in 2014, and since then a CO-OP Grocery and liquor store have been built, as well as Windsor-Ford.

During the meeting, several councilors expressed that if this were to be approved, it might set a precedent for rezoning to be used as a method of tax avoidance.

Mayor Given says he views this request as a type of amendment.

“I think it would be important to acknowledge that in many cases, local developers will often do their developments in phases, and they will only ask for rezoning as the development actually progresses, as things get built and more land sells, then they will come back to the city and ask for land to be rezoned from urban reserve up to commercial. In this case, the developer went and rezoned all of the land at once, and so if anything, from my perspective, this is a correction of something that likely wouldn’t have happened under the direction of most of our local developers.”

by Emily Keller