Prof. David Gordon stands outside of the Stauffer Library at Queens University in Kingston, Ont. on Jan. 11.Kaja Tirrul/The Globe and Mail
As part of a rezoning application to build more than 1,000 new dwellings over the course of a decade in Glenmore Landing, a community shopping centre in Calgary’s southwest, RioCan Real Estate Investment Trust, the property’s owner and developer, spent close to a year engaging neighbours to incorporate their feedback into a cohesive vision for the 10-acre site.
Built in 1980, the Glenmore Landing Shopping Centre not only sits adjacent to a bus rapid transit route and green open spaces that surround the Glenmore reservoir, it’s also located within a 20-minute walk from two elementary schools and one high school.
These features make the shopping centre’s site “a perfect location for intensification,” says David Gordon, professor of planning history, community design and urban development at Queen’s University’s School of Urban and Regional Planning.
“The low hanging fruit on intensification is all those auto-dependent malls,” he says, emphasizing the importance of accommodating growth in commercial areas constructed prior to the 1980s to limit urban sprawl, reduce car dependency and prevent the demise of small- and medium-size retail.
Redeveloping Glenmore Landing to include housing aligns with Calgary’s Municipal Development Plan (MDP), as well as the city’s climate and housing strategies.
However, in December city council voted against RioCan’s proposal, citing the concerns voiced by community members about the impacts densification could have on traffic, water infrastructure and the environmental integrity of the reservoir and surrounding natural areas, among other grievances.
This outcome evidences the shortcomings of Calgary’s planning process in meeting the overarching goal of the MDP: to build a more compact, resilient city – but change could be in the horizon.
The Glenmore Landing shopping centre in southwest Calgary was built in 1980 and was the subject of a proposal by owner RioCan Real Estate Investment Trust to build over 1,000 new dwellings on the site over the course of a decade.RioCan Real Estate Investment Trust
The City of Calgary estimates that established areas, or about 180 neighbourhoods, contain an average of 2.75 hectares of strip malls each. Moreover, according to the 2024 tax assessment, there are 28 parcels built in 1980 or earlier zoned to allow for community malls like Glenmore Landing, a scale of shopping centre whose vacancy rate reached 3.7 per cent in the third quarter of 2024 thanks to strong population growth, but low vacancies shouldn’t be taken for granted.
“Almost all the medium-sized malls are in bad shape, so the trick is to prezone them to allow apartment buildings and encourage mixed use,” Prof. Gordon says, emphasizing the importance of planning pro-actively. “It’s a terrible waste, when one of these malls dies, to replace it with a power centre.”
Prezoning is a planning process that aims to reduce the need for rezoning applications by allowing for more as-of-right uses within a land-use district, streamlining redevelopment and mitigating some of the costs associated with a longer development timeline.
But implementing this process doesn’t come without risk.
According to Byron Miller, a professor of geography and co-ordinator of the urban studies program at the University of Calgary, while prezoning can be effective on smaller sites that don’t require a master plan, maintaining the opportunities for citizens to provide feedback on large proposals, such as Glenmore Landing, is essential to sustain the legitimacy of urban governance.
“It’s pretty much a given in any major redevelopment process that there’s going to be opposition,” he says. “Some people want to eliminate all the conflict and approve anything without discussion, but we have to remember that we live in a democracy, so everyone who wants to speak up should be heard.”
But the current process is far from efficient.
Despite the intensification potential of Glenmore Landing, the lack of an existing redevelopment plan, and an antiquated zoning bylaw, increased the complexity of the process needed to allow for the construction of six residential towers on the shopping centre’s site.
“When we looked at the Glenmore Landing application, we identified the policy alignment with that particular application,” explains Troy Gonzalez (no relation), a community planning co-ordinator at the City of Calgary.
“There was a nonstatutory plan that we brought forward, which has intended to bridge the gap between not really having any up to date policy in that area, and making sure that we were getting an outcome that was good in terms of scale, the types of uses and policies to help guide development.”
RioCan's redevelopment proposal for Glenmore Landing included building six towers at the site, which sits adjacent to a bus rapid transit route and green open spaces that surround the nearby Glenmore reservoir. However, in December Calgary city council voted against RioCan’s proposal, citing the concerns voiced by community members about the impacts of densification on the site.
RioCan Real Estate Investment Trust
The most recent planning document for this area is a sector plan adopted in 1966.
To address similar challenges in neighbourhoods across the city, and meet the goals of the MDP, in 2021 the City of Calgary kick-started the creation of local area plans. Based on the input of a variety of stakeholders, including residents, developers, businesses and community organizations, these plans identify opportunities for redevelopment in established neighbourhoods, as well as the existing challenges to accommodate growth and change.
“Local area plans are a really good place to get into what types of things might occur on older commercial sites,” Mr. Gonzalez says, noting that creating a single plan for a cluster of neighbourhoods can take up to 24 months. “The ultimate goal is to ensure that we have up-to-date policies across the entire city – it’s just taking some time to get there.”
Out of the 42 local area plans needed to cover the entire city, four have been approved since 2021, and four are slated for completion in 2025. To receive council approval, all of these plans require a public hearing.
However, even if a redevelopment proposal aligns with the local area plan, a rezoning application is required when the recommended use differs from the use stipulated in the zoning bylaw, and like a local area plan, the process to rezone a parcel culminates with a public hearing in council.
“The policies that we have in place are really good for guiding us through the review process,” Mr. Gonzalez says. “But ultimately, approving a recommendation to rezone or redesignate a site is a decision of council. It’s really up to them in their role as elected officials to make that determination of whether they think a recommendation is appropriate or not.”
In the case of Glenmore Landing, the ward’s councillor, Kourtney Penner, voted in support of RioCan’s proposal, as did six other city councillors, including Calgary Mayor Jyoti Gondek. But the existing policy framework failed to sway eight councillors in the face of fierce opposition from the community.
In other words, even though Calgary’s existing planning policies prioritize densification in established neighbourhoods, the process allows proposals be derailed by the whims of residents. As a result, the potential of commercial sites in the prairie city remains largely untapped.
“When you have a general document that supports intensification, but the zoning stays with the existing use, it tells the developer that there is potential, but you’re going to have a five-year fight with the neighbourhood to get that rezoning,” Prof. Gordon says, adding that while this process allows municipalities to ensure new projects create benefit for the community, it also pushes developers to scale up their proposals. “If they need an eight-storey building, they’ll start with 24.”
Since 2003, when the twin towers of The Renaissance were completed atop North Hill Centre, a shopping mall in Calgary’s northwest, only a handful of commercial sites have been redeveloped to incorporate housing, including University City, Northland Village and UXBorough.
To streamline the planning process, the City of Calgary is currently working on a simplified zoning bylaw that, if approved in 2026, could help drive intensification on sites zoned for community commercial, as well as commercial corridors. The document’s latest draft includes housing as a permitted use on mixed-use parcels smaller than one hectare, while redeveloping larger sites and buildings taller than 22 metres, or about six storeys, would continue to require a rezoning application.
“Both city planners and local politicians like that every project needs a rezoning, because it has to be a negotiation, " Prof. Gordon says. “If you’re a local ward politician, you want to control the approval process for projects that are happening in your ward – councillors are used to being the controllers of the benefits from development.”