Foothills County approves Hwy 2A design policies

Foothills councillors have given the seal of approval to design guidelines in the industrial corridor.

After months of consultation and tweaking landscaping and design requirements for the Highway 2A industrial area, council approved the document at its March 3 meeting.

Recent amendments include permitting multiple uses of areas on the site, such as sections of parking lots for snow storage during the winter, provided those areas are specifically identified on the site plan at the development permit stage.

“It’s important that development permit applications for business uses illustrate a snow storage area within their parcel, whether that take out some of their existing parking or not, whether that utilize some landscaped areas or not,” said director of planning Heather Hemingway. “We have an obligation as a responsible development authority to require that business operators have some space, if they have a parking lot, to be able to store some snow without having to truck it off.”

She said the biggest concern is people piling snow on landscaped areas, where the chemicals often removed with snow from the parking lot can damage foliage.

It would be fine on areas landscaped with rock but not plants, she said.

“Unfortunately, it’s hard enough to be a tree in our country these days, and it’s not easy when you get things dumped on you,” said Hemingway. “We just have to be conscious that snow storage is chemical-laden, typically, and does not support growth of plant material.”

The issue of compliance with the design guidelines was also discussed, and whether business would be required to be in compliance with the new design guidelines in order to make any changes to their site.

“They would be subject to a new standard every time we make changes, and every time we make a small adjustment to their business,” said Coun. Rob Siewert. “It gets in a little bit of frustration on business owners that just because they’re doing a minor change suddenly they have to spend $10,000 to $50,000 on a little bit of design or changes to their yard to meet this.”

Coun. Delilah Miller said she was wary of rewarding business owners whose sites were not in compliance with setbacks or other design guidelines like landscaping or having suitable dark-sky lighting.

“I think this is a good opportunity to have more businesses come into compliance and I would not want to reward them by letting them have these exceptions to the rule without being fully compliant with the municipality,” said Miller. “If they’re fully compliant then yes, maybe they get a pass on some minor changes to their operation.

“I think this would be incentive for the folks that are not in compliance to come into compliance with the County.”

Harry Riva Cambrin cautioned there could be some upset business owners or buyers in the future, because it’s not always clear a site is not in compliance. Since the County’s enforcement is complaint-based, if someone had not fulfilled their landscape obligations a new owner may not be aware.

“I would not find out that I had to do landscaping until I actually came in to get a development permit,” said Riva Cambrin. “And at that stage in the buying process, I’ve probably expended a lot of funds so I’m not a very happy camper.”

He said it could be an opportunity for the County to begin visiting sites that have taken out permits on a regular basis to ensure all conditions have been met, rather than waiting for enforcement or a changeover in ownership.

It would cost some money to do the work, but he said it would be valuable.

“We do have a bit of a hole in our system,” said Riva Cambrin. “You get very upset people who have thought they’ve done everything, all their due diligence, and all of a sudden someone’s telling them they’re going to have to spend an extra $30,000, $50,000 or more on bringing the property into compliance, whether it’s dark sky or whether it’s the guidelines.”

Hemingway said another opportunity would be to expand the scope of letters of compliance that are typically sought on sales of property, where lawyers seek information such as prior environmental testing or waste management on the site.

“Right now we just look at setbacks,” said Hemingway. “We don’t talk about development permit compliance in our letters of compliance. It’s a good way to warn a future purchaser that compliance has not been achieved on the existing development permit.”

Reeve Suzanne Oel said such a practice could inspire people across the County to be more diligent about following through with conditions.

“If people start realizing that when they went to sell something if they weren’t in compliance it changed the game for them and they had to declare an amount of negotiation, or however it might work on the sale, the word would be shared,” said Oel.