Jun 2, 2021
RE: North Hill Communities Local Area Plan (NHCLAP)
Mount Pleasant Residents
The latest version of the North Hill Communities Local Area Plan (NHCLAP) has been posted to the City of Calgary website here and will be presented to Council on Jun 21, 2021. As a stakeholder in the City of Calgary engagement process, the Mount Pleasant Community Association (MPCA) supports the North Hill Communities Local Area Plan (NHCLAP).
The NHCLAP directly affects Mount Pleasant as one of the nine North Hill communities included in the NHCLAP. The NHCLAP will be used as a tool guide development for the collective communities of Highland Park, Mount Pleasant, Tuxedo Park, Winston Heights-Mountview, Crescent Heights, Renfrew, Rosedale, Capitol Hill, and Thorncliffe Greenview that builds on the vision, goals, and policies outlined in Calgary’s Municipal Development Plan (MDP).
The MPCA has expressed our support for the NHCLAP for the following reasons:
- Other City Planning Documents
The Calgary Municipal Development Plan (MDP) already allows for the densities proposed by the NHCLAP in Mount Pleasant. The MDP is a higher order plan than the NHCLAP meaning that it takes precedence over all Local Area Plans. Mount Pleasant is designated as an inner-city community within the Calgary MDP. This means that the policies applicable to inner-city communities apply to how our community grows and changes. The approved Calgary MDP already has policies in place that allow townhome as well as semi-, single-detached and secondary suite development within inner-city communities. Further, the City must make their plans consistent with one another.
- Engagement
The MPCA recognizes the extensive engagement the City of Calgary conducted with stakeholders on the NHCLAP. The Community Association was first engaged in 2018 and subsequently participated in approximately ten (10) in-person and virtual stakeholder engagement events about future development plans for Mount Pleasant. Since the fall of 2020, the Community Association participated in four (4) virtual engagement events (December 09 2020; January 27 2021, April 20 2021 (both Guide & NHCLAP), May 19 2021) that kept the Community Association informed about this planning document, showed us how the City implemented feedback from the MPCA, and tracked the changes that the City made to the NHCLAP over this timeframe. The City staff involved in this project have kept lines of communication open with several other groups interested in how the NHCLAP will affect established communities, such as heritage advocacy groups.
From the outset of the NHCLAP process, the MPCA representatives expressed concerns regarding increasing density within the heart of Mount Pleasant. In 2016, the MPCA reached out to the community and hosted an all-day, open house visioning exercise to gather feedback on the development of our neighborhood. At that event it was expressed that our residents support higher density on the busier roads in our community (4 Street, 10 Street, and 20 Avenue) but not throughout the rest of the community. The MPCA stuck to that vision when advocating on behalf of our community.
In May 2021, we met with City staff members to discuss potential amendments to the NHCLAP based on concerns raised by Mount Pleassant residents and requested that the scale be lowered to four stories along 20th AV NW as well as along 5th ST NW. We have been informed by City administration that they have listened to our concerns and will be requesting Council to incorporate these amendments on Jun 21. More details can be found in the document provided by the City attached to this notice.
We recognize that not everyone is happy with the final results of the NHCLAP, but the MPCA believes we have been adequately engaged on this project and generally, our concerns have been listened to and addressed in this document.
Thank you for your time and consideration.
Sincerely,
Alison Timmins
Mount Pleasant Community Association Board Director
Planning & Development Committee Chair
