Plans for industrial and commercial development on the east side of the runway at the Okotoks Airport are being scrapped and the Town and developers are asking residents for input on future development.
The Town of Okotoks started reviewing development plans for more than 40 acres of land along the Town’s east boundary currently earmarked for industrial development.
A meeting will be held next week for residents to provide input in an effort to draft a new plan for the land on the east side of the Okotoks Airport.
Coun. Stephen Clark said he suspects a lot of residents in the Air Ranch area may not know what was planned for the area and this is their chance to have a say on its future.
“It’s totally surrounded by residential, my experience has been that most, if not all the residents, are not aware it is zoned for anything other than residential,” said Clark, who is also an Air Ranch resident. “There’s a lot of different options and we need to hear from the community.”
The meeting will be held at the Crystal Ridge Golf Course on Feb. 23 from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m.
In Clark’s opinion, he said it makes sense to rezone the land from commercial-industrial to a designation permitting residential development. He said the current plan would create an area of industrial development surrounded by homes and not connected to any other industrial area.
“On the face of it, it seems incompatible, it seems largely unknown,” he said.
Okotoks municipal planner Steve Hanhart said the developers wanted to consider a change in the long-term land use for the area.
At this point the Town and developers have not drawn up detailed plans such as an area structure plan. Rather, said Hanhart, they are working on a new vision for developing the area.
“We’re at the first step in the public consultation process,” he said.
Hanhart said they are starting with a fairly blank slate to give residents a chance to say what they want to see in the area.
He said it doesn’t make much sense to keep the industrial land use.
The question now, said Hanhart, is what should be the appropriate mix of land uses.
Suggestions have included a post-secondary satellite campus, seniors housing and the area was included in a list of potential sites for an indoor field house.
“One of the challenges would be to attempt to keep some of the employment we were hoping to achieve in that area,” said Hanhart.
At one point, the entire area on the east side of the runway was zoned for industrial and commercial development. Over time, he said this eroded to add residential development to the area.
According to Hanhart, there are a number of issues that would need to be answered before anything is finalized such as water supply, the Calgary metropolitan plan and the intermunicipal development plan with the MD of Foothills.
“There are some long-range planning things out there that will need to start to fall into place for us to move all the way down the planning process,” he said.
Hanhart also said it could add another 2,000 to 3,000 people to the town’s build-out population. Okotoks has a population cap of 30,000 and the current population is about 24,000 people.
He said the move would mean the Town would have to look at its impact because changing such a large area to residential development would impact Okotoks’ tax base. The loss of potential industrial and commercial development in the Air Ranch area would have to be made up elsewhere, he said.
As well, there are strict rules in the Okotoks Airport’s registration that need to be adhered to such as height restrictions, building set backs, and take-off and landing zones. Any development plans would need to be submitted to Transport Canada.
“The reality of those lands is they are adjacent to an airport, so there are some impacts at the airport that would have to be addressed,” said Hanhart.
Access may also be an issue as he said residents will likely want to see some kind of access to 48th Street from the Air Ranch.
