It’s one small step in the battle to slow urban sprawl to a crawl.

The successful redevelopment of a former commercial site in Edmonton’s mature southside Belgravia neighbourhood has seen the creation of a 56-lot residential undertaking that is now sold out.

It is also a modest example of what city officials would like to see accomplished across the city, switching the emphasis from the ongoing creation of new suburbs to the completion of existing city districts.

“We’re trying to encourage the development of older communities,” said Edmonton City Councillor Allan Bolstad. “We want to make sure we take advantage of the billions of dollars of existing public and private infrastructure – the schools, roads and libraries, along with private commercial developments that are already there.”

File photo by Jack Dagley, Business Edge
Gay Erickson marketed the Belgravia project last year when the Workers’ Compensation Board vacated the site.

The goal, added Bolstad, is to try to combat urban sprawl. “One way of looking at it is to make efficient use of the space we have.”

The Belgravia project is a case in point of how available land can be transformed into a new development without further burdening the city’s infrastructure or services.

“I’d much sooner see this happen in a developed part of the city where we have the services in place . . . I don’t know when we’ll get all the services to newer parts of city. Here, we have the whole nine yards all in place,” said Bolstad.

Built on land formerly occupied by a Workers’ Compensation Board (WCB) facility, the Belgravia development offered single-family homebuyers the opportunity to buy into the large-scale infill project at a cost of $150,000 to $350,000 just for the land alone.

“These lot prices were higher than most in the city, but we believed people would see the value of living and building a special home in this unique area,” said Gay Erickson, who marketed the lots for the developer, Westcorp Properties Inc.

“Belgravia is a peaceful, mature area and it’s mostly prized for its location. It’s popular because on its south border there’s a city park and there’s access to the city’s trail system,” said Erickson. “Another huge drawing card is the neighbourhood’s proximity to the University of Alberta, the University of Alberta Hospital, the Cross Cancer Institute and Whyte Ave.”

The land became available when the WCB decided it made more sense to build elsewhere in Edmonton. Retrofitting its Belgravia building, which was constructed in 1952 and needed $13 million to be brought up to code, proved too costly an option. Instead, the WCB moved to a more accessible site in north-central Edmonton at 131 Airport Rd., where it built a new facility for $18.7 million.

Hundreds of potential buyers lined up on a waiting list in 2002 after news of the Belgravia development first spread, said Erickson, even though buying there meant building a house would likely end up exceeding $450,000.

“We’ve had people who currently live in the neighbourhood who have sold their homes to move here, people who have moved to the city to work in and around the area – such as doctors – and we’ve got people who have moved pretty much from all parts of the city,” said Erickson.

Meanwhile, this new “neighbourhood within a neighbourhood” has a distinctive flair due to the strong attention to architectural guidelines. Rather than giving the impression of a cookie-cutter new subdivision, this part of Belgravia blends into the eclectic feel of the area.

No two homes that are side by side can be similar in style or colour. If there was too much similarity, the setback was increased for one of the homes. “This way, you don’t have a wall of homes, it just creates interest by varying the setback,” said Erickson.

But Belgravia is just the tip of the iceberg for Edmonton’s infills.

“We’ve just developed a number of policies in the last few months to redevelop older neighbourhoods and make better use of public transit,” said Councillor Bolstad.

Called Smart Choices, city council has asked the administration to:

* Develop a comprehensive transit- oriented development strategy.

* Make walkability a prime consideration in infrastructure and development decisions.

* Develop a neighbourhood reinvestment program.

* Develop a small-scale and medium- density residential infill strategy.

* Develop an approach to the redevelopment of under-utilized commercial and industrial lands.

* Develop a comprehensive growth scenario with the next municipal development plan review.

* Establish a Smart Choices communication strategy.

“We’re just getting started,” said Bolstad. “We’ve been trying to do bits and pieces on an ad hoc basis and we just recently pulled it together into a comprehensive policy. It will be an ongoing exercise. It’s going to be an extensive effort over a number of years to make the city more efficient for decades to come.”

(Laura Severs can be reached at laura@businessedge.ca)