Craig Gilbert | [email protected]
The owner of the Aspen Gardens complex at Pyramid Lake Road and Bonhomme Street has a permit for 21 new two-bedroom units.
A development permit has been issued by Parks Canada, a building permit has not, Jasper councillors heard on July 3.
Once built, they’ll be available for purchase, according to town CAO Mark Fercho, who chairs the Jasper Community Housing Corp.
Also at Tuesday’s meeting, councillors were updated on a pair of other housing opportunities. Plot GA landed back on the table “immediately” after the Jasper Park Cycling Association told the town it has no reasonable prospect of building out a skills park on that plot within the next five years. The group is paring down its vision, and the park now would occupy only the plot on Connaught Drive where the ad-hoc bike obstacles dug in off the Town Trail are.
According to Fercho’s report the town and the JPCA applied jointly for a 10-year occupancy licence from Parks but since the group isn’t ready to build the park, the licence hasn’t been “executed” yet.
Town council approved chipping in about $5,400 of the $86,000 it’s going to cost for the first draft of engineering designs for a sewer system for those lots and others (GA, GB and including the site of the future Hostelling International hostel next to Home Hardware. It’s in the H district.
Parks and HI are paying the balance of the design fee; town staffers are working out how to recoup the cost of the eventual build-out of services to the lots through development fees.
It’s not a park, Mark
Last but not least, Fireman’s Park may be up for a bit of a haircut itself. Fercho said while consultants with ParioPlan were in town doing the legwork behind their recently released housing report, he had them size up “underutilized” space in the park on Pyramid Lake Road.
The verdict was that the east half of the park, about 1,800 square metres of land, could host a 14-unit development to compliment the new equipment being installed in the playground next door.
The Jasper Volunteer Fire Brigade holds the lease on the land and, since it recognizes the need for housing for seniors and in general, is on board with the plan.
The units would feature accessible ground-floor housing with a family unit upstairs and a healthy amount of soundproofing between.
There’s even space left over for a parking lot in back with access from Aspen Crescent.
The plan will have an opportunity for public review since it’s going to the Parks Canada development committee for a zoning change.
Fercho said in his report that if the Fireman’s Park site is developed, there would be more green space in the town overall due in part to the relocation of the dog park.
Except it’s not called a dog park.
Mayor Richard Ireland like the rest of council didn’t have much or anything to say when the Aspen Gardens permit was brought up but pounced on the town’s CAO when he called the off-leash area a dog park.
If the Quorum Room walls could talk they would have stories about lengthy debates over what to call an off-leash area and why.
“It’s not a dog park,” he said. “It means something else to other people.”
A veteran defense lawyer, Ireland let Fercho off with a warning since it all transpired before his time.
