Residents of a south Edmonton neighbourhood are concerned over a future townhouse development in their area.
The city will turn a surplus school site in the Twin Brooks neighbourhood into townhomes. This project is one of the 20 surplus school sites the city approved for housing developments 10 years ago.
City officials held a meeting today to recruit residents to join the design team.
“The community over those months will help decide the orientation of the homes,” City of Edmonton Director Tim McCargar said. “Which way they are facing, their massing, the architectural details to ensure they fit with the community, site access and we spend a lot of time on landscaping and colours.”
The other purpose of Saturday’s meeting was to answer questions to concerned residents.
“We have staff on property assessment to speak to property value concerns, the transportation staff can speak to transportation and parking concerns and I have staff here to speak to sports fields concerns we heard from the community as well,” McCargar said.
But some residents claimed that they were never consulted 10 years ago when it was decided to use the space to build housing.
“It has nothing to do with stopping development as a whole, we are actually pro development,” Twin Brooks resident Hareishun Shanmuganathan said. “But it has to be right for the community and the fundamental thing we are opposed to is that this development was put in place without following the due process of consultation of people.”
