March 18, 2021
RE: Guidebook for Great Communities and North Hill Communities Local Area Plan To whom it may concern,
Please accept this letter from the Mount Pleasant Community Association (MPCA) pertaining to the Guidebook for Great Communities (“the Guidebook”) and the North Hill Communities Local Area Plan (NHCLAP), on the agenda for the March 22, 2021 Combined Meeting of Council. MPCA is pleased to support both these documents.
The Guidebook and NHCLAP directly affects Mount Pleasant, both as an established community and as one of the nine North Hill communities included in the NHCLAP. The Guidebook is the blueprint for our communities and their successful future. It is a policy document that combines existing policies, improved policies, and new policies all in one place. It makes for a more inclusive and consistent way to plan a community’s growth. The NHCLAP is an implementing plan 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) and the Guidebook.
Mount Pleasant Community Association recognizes the extensive engagement the City of Calgary conducted with stakeholders of the Guidebook and the NHCLAP. The Community Association was first engaged in 2018 and subsequently participated in approximately ten in-person and virtual stakeholder engagement events. Since the fall of 2020, the Community Association participated in three (3) virtual engagement events (November 12 2020 (Guidebook); December 09 2020 (NHCLAP); January 27, 2021 (both)) that kept the Community Association informed about these planning documents, showed us how they implemented feedback from the Community, and tracked the changes that the City made to both documents over this timeframe.
The City staff involved in this project have kept lines of communication open with several other groups interested in how the Guidebook and NHCLAP will affect established communities, such as heritage advocacy groups.
From the outset of the NHCLAP process, the MPCA 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. We are pleased to see that the
latest version of the NHCLAP, supported by the Guidebook, proposes a Limited building scale throughout the majority of Mount Pleasant – that is, buildings typically 2-3 storeys in height and oriented to the street.
We recognize that not everyone is happy with the final results of these planning documents, but the MPCA believes we have been adequately engaged on this project and generally, our concerns have been listened to and addressed in the final version of these documents.
Thank you for your time and consideration. Best regards,
Alison Timmins
Mount Pleasant Community Association Board Director Planning & Development Committee Chair
Asia Walker, RPP MCIP
Planning & Development Committee Co-Chair
