'Urban village' plan for Brentwood passes 1st hurdle

City hall wants to build an "urban village" around a northwest C-Train stop, a plan that is unpopular with some of the people living near the transit hub.

Calgary's planning commission approved the Brentwood Station Area Redevelopment plan Thursday. The plan willnow goto council for approval, likely in December.

On one side of the BrentwoodC-Train station at Crowchild Trail are strip malls, a few low-rise apartments, a parkand the residential neighbourhood of Brentwood.

On the other side is the University of Calgary and the residential neighbourhood of Varsity.

The city's30-yearvision would see another 6,000 people living in the dozen or so square blocks around the Brentwood C-Train station in low-, medium- and highrise apartment buildings, mostly connected with pathways and green spaces to encourage walking. The planalsocalls forsmaller shops and maybe even a farmers market in the area.

Local Ald. Druh Farrell said she wants to see concentrated communities built around other C-Train stops in Calgary. The city is already looking at nearby Lions Park and Banff Trail stops.

"It creates a vital community where people do not actually need a car. They're looking at this as a way to sort of crawl our way out of sprawl," she said.

Community associations reject the idea

The Brentwood and Varsity community associationsboth saythey can't support the current the plan.

Craig Maxie lives in Brentwood, a 1960s-era suburb, andcalled it a terrible idea for any existing community in Calgary.

"You can't double, triple, quadruple the population and not have a huge impact on the way of life of people who live there."

Maxie says city officials needto ask people what they think about the policy before pushing ahead and he's sure the city would then quickly abandon the idea.

Office towers planned for University Heights

South of the planned development, residents of University Heights are worried about plans for at least two office towers in a strip mall in their neighbourhood.

The owner of the Stadium Shopping Centre at 16th Avenue and 29th Street NW has plans for multi-storey office buildings at the site.

More than 100 residents showed up at City Hall on Monday to opposethe plan. A decision on approval of the stadium shopping centre office towers isn't expected until later in the year.