ESTEVAN - The City of Estevan hasn’t given up hope on selling the remaining vacant lots inside the Glen Peterson Park.
Estevan city council discussed a 35-page neighbourhood plan for the area in northeast Estevan during Monday night’s meeting. An open house will be held and a survey will be posted online before council gives final approval to the document.
Richard Neufeld, the city’s manager of land development services, said the plan was first drafted a few years ago but was never adopted. It reached the point in which it was approved for public discourse, but the city was also focused on other priorities such as the official community plan and the zoning bylaw, which was adopted by the provincial government in February.
“I want to get this project finalized,” Neufeld said regarding the plan.
The city’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic also delayed implementing the plan.
There are six parcels in the park that haven’t been developed, but one of them has been spoken for, Neufeld said. There aren’t any financial incentives, as those are in another document, but one thing that Neufeld believes will help is that some developments are no longer allowed.
“For example, with the old zoning bylaw, you could put a tire recycling firm, you could put a tank farm for industrial use [in there], stuff that wouldn’t be visually appealing or could have odors associated with them, and we screened them out to make it more of a business park rather than an industrial park,” Neufeld said.
He is confident these changes will help with filling the vacancies, but he admits the economy will decide if they are filled.
The Glen Peterson Park was first unveiled well over a decade ago. A proposed solution to the empty lots was to allow for a new approach that would include, among other things, residential development within the area, pathways, college dormitories and more.
A committee of landowners within the neighbourhood contributed to the overall theme and
goals of the plan, Neufeld said. But the consultations happened a few years ago and some of the landowners in the area have changed.
The subdivision also has a commercial development east of the intersection of Kensington Avenue and Nesbitt Drive that has been in place for more than a decade. Neufeld noted that further east of the stores is the foundation of what would have been a hotel, and then there is land that would have been used for a dormitory for the Southeast College’s students back when Estevan was experiencing a shortage in rental properties.
A seniors’ complex with access to Walmart has also been discussed.
“It also then allows for connectivity if you do that, where if you had a dormitory or something like that there, you could have sidewalks connecting it to the college and then you can have pathways or sidewalks connecting it to the area around the Walmart,” said Neufeld.
The King Street extension, which has been developed through a partnership with the Southeast College, is also a big step forward, Neufeld said.
“In 2019, that was something that was looked upon as being really long term, and now we have the situation where the roadbed is pretty well done thanks to the efforts of the college and their program.”
Any land along the new road should be appealing, he said, and it also gives another access point for Glen Peterson Park.
“One of the issues that we had, and this was around 2019, was you had that intersection at Nesbitt and Kensington, and the whole area in there is basically a cul-de-sac or a dead end, because there’s no alternative access to get out of there. And that was not looked at as an attractive feature by some businesses that had inquired about moving in there.”
During Monday night’s meeting, Coun. Lindsay Clark suggested a different name for the King Street extension, and said he hoped it would be paved, because some other roads in town never received asphalt.
Neufeld agreed that it will need to have a different name.
“The road bed is there, so my assumption is that the day will come that it will be an operational road. I’m not sure what day or what year, but it will happen.”
With no businesses on the King Street connector at this time, Mayor Roy Ludwig said this would be an opportune time to make a name change.
A date for the open house hasn’t been set.
