Notes from those not in favour of Plan It Calgary

The following are notes from June 24 and 25, 2009 at City Hall.

Michael Flynn (Urban Development Institute – the developer lobby group)

-Let’s keep working together.
-I am proud of our accomplishments in creating complete communities. We come bearing solutions. New communities are providing an ever increase choice of housing.
-We are designing complete communities. Edgemont is a complete community. It is 8 units per acre.
-We need a minimum 15 year land supply.
-Under Plan It, we are expecting no significant changes over the next 10 years.
-We are recommending a task force between industry and the City to work on the meaning, interpretation, and implementation of Plan It.
-Lots in Plan It needs to be road tested. Complete streets need to be tested first.
-We need more attention to the movement of goods.
-Afraid of the unintended consequences of Plan It. In Portland, people are moving outside of the city.
-We are not advocating for the dispersed scenario.

Jay Westman (Jayman Homes – the largest home builder in Calgary)

-Plan It Calgary is the complete opposite of what the market wants.
-Listen to the experts, take Plan It back to the drawing board.
-For consumers, the key is affordability. When given the choice of home, no one is taking the extreme energy efficient option. Consumers are choosing extra space or luxury items instead.
-Costs are down 18% since economic downturn. Profit margins are down to 4 to 6%.
-The cost of cement is three times higher than wood structures.
-People won’t pay the price because they aren’t near downtown like amenities.
-Those in favour of Plan It have painted us as the Evil Empire. 100,000 people go through our show homes every year (there is a total of 400,000 show home visits each year in Calgary).These people vote with their wallets. We have tested multi-family housing demand in show home focus groups and through show home centre videos. There is not enough demand for this housing option.
-People are not going to stop being people.
-I love Garrison Woods, but housing there is 33 to 50% more expensive than in the suburbs. You pay a price for having amenities around and already in place. Most people would love to live there, but they can’t afford to live there.
-There is a demand for density within the city. The issue is affordability. Who is going to build it if we can’t sell it?
-We are already building complete communities. People living in the inner city haven’t seen the new plans for the communities of Mahogany, Auburn Bay, and Walden.
-The other problem is homes built 5 years ago were planned 15 years ago.
-Infrastructure costs are higher for developers in the inner city.
-Need to take targets (11 units per acre) out of the Plan It document.

Marcello Chiacchia (Genstar)

-We support the key directions of Plan It. We are not in support of sprawl. We are already incorporating sustainability principles in new communities like Walden. Here, 60% of units of multi-family and 40% are single detached housing. The density is 10 units per acre.
-The industry has responded. From the 1960s to the 1980s, the density of communities was 4 to 6 units per acre. In the 1990s it was 6 to 8 units per acre and in the 2000s it is up to 8 to 12 units per acre.
-Sustainability is not high in the minds of consumers. Affordability is the driver of demand.

Allan Norris (Carma Developers)
–There is nothing wrong with the direction we are going.

Other random quotes from other speakers

-Plan It is trying to house us like cattle. Calgary is home to wide open spaces and big blue skies.
-Most people are uninformed about Plan It.
-Plan It is the Emperor Has No Clothing.
-I am afraid of stranded sites where multi-family housing units go unsold.