Three Sisters Mountain Village has officially submitted a substantial part of an area structure plan amendment application for its resort centre area and it is proposing major changes as a result of the developer abandoning a golf course on its lands.
The amendment application is a significant one that requires a number of supporting documents and reports to be considered complete, according to Town of Canmore planner Tracy Woitenko.
In order for the resort centre application to be complete, an environmental impact statement is required, however, a council change to the policy on how they are reviewed by the municipality means it may take more time than expected.
The Town is required by policy to have an independent consultant not only review the EIS, but also its terms of reference. Woitenko said once that consultant is chosen, the process followed and the EIS submitted, and the entire application is considered complete – administration will take several weeks to review it before it is made public and can be scheduled for a council meeting for first reading.
The developer, however, has already presented details of the plan and it includes a major shift for TSMV when it comes to how human wildlife interaction is to be mitigated on its land with the proposal of a wildlife exclusionary fence around the entire subdivision.
Officials with TSMV’s representatives with QuantumPlace and the municipality were on hand at an open house in October on the Resort Centre changes being considered and future development proposals on the Smith Creek area.
QuantumPlace principal Chris Ollenberger said there is better information now than there was in 2004 about how to mitigate wildlife in the subdivision, which borders a wildlife corridor.
“What is interesting is the science about wildlife interactions with humans has grown in the last 10 to 12 years,” Ollenberger said. “What they have seen is the soft edge approach has not provided a buffer space, it has just increased habitat for both humans and wildlife and they are co-mingling and it is causing some real issues.”
Up until now, the soft edge has been the approach used for where development is directly adjacent to forested areas or wildlife corridors and habitat patches. The hard edge is to put a fence in place as a physical barrier to prevent wildlife and people from interacting – both inside the developed area and inside the corridor.
“The wildlife fence provides not only a physical barrier for wildlife as they move through, but it is also a physical and visual barrier for people,” Ollenberger said.
Since coming out of receivership in 2013, he said the company has been collecting wildlife movement data in the corridor and it has shown the majority of animals using the space set aside for connectivity are humans and, more often than not, they also have an off-leash dog.
Ollenberger said he hopes installing a fence at the same time as creating designated trails and better education, signage and mapping to show people where the corridors are and to avoid them for them to function is a better solution for the issue of human use.
The fence, however, has not been without challenge in the community. While the developer is proposing to install the exclusion fencing, it is the Town of Canmore that is expected to maintain it, as well as replace it in future should it need to be.
Former mayor Ron Casey challenged that proposal at a recent community conversation on wildlife hosted by the Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative.
Casey said the use of a hard edge approach, or a wildlife fence, does nothing more than expand the area available for development and it should not be the responsibility of future taxpayers to pay for its maintenance or operation.
“Under no circumstances should the taxpayers of the Town of Canmore pay for the long term maintenance and capital replacement of this fence if it expands the land available for development,” he said. “A proper plan is needed.”
The proposed fencing for the resort center would be located within the conservation easement that already exists along the border of the corridor, separating it from the developed golf course lands.
The golf course was the second one proposed for TSMV and was almost completely developed – but the company went into receivership in 2010 and the area went into disrepair over time before the current ownership group bought it in 2013.
Ollenberger said the land provides development potential for the community in terms of residential, affordable and seniors housing that didn’t exist before.
“In other cities, this would be seen as an infill development of a kind,” he said. “It is taking an area that was developed, even though it was unfinished, and repurposing it again in terms of a development area.
“There are some good arguments for the sustainable development of an unfinished golf course, as opposed to it lying fallow and unproductive.”
Ollenberger said the original approval of the resort core did not provide the critical mass of space needed to create a vibrant, economically viable development. With the added development included in the ASP amendment proposed, he said the resort core would add viable, vibrant growth to the community.
“One of the challenges we had in 2004 is the physical area of the resort centre itself is not that much bigger than Three Sister’s Creek. So to actually try and provide a viable commercial hub that is complementary, and not in competition with, the town centre, it needed to be a bit bigger to include loading, parking, park space, plazas and buildings,” Ollenberger said.
The Resort Centre area structure plan amendment was developed in tandem with work on the Smith Creek area structure plan. Ollenberger said TSMV is not yet ready to submit that application as it is still working on details of the designation of the wildlife corridor (a provincial responsibility) as well as the impact of steep creek flooding risk on the developable land area.
Even though the developer is waiting to submit that application, Ollenberger said the resort centre area is really the heart and soul of the entre Three Sisters lands.
“The premise of Three Sisters from its very inception was about a tourism project providing employment opportunities,” he said. “This is still the heart and the core of Three Sisters, so it is an important amendment for the success of the project.”
