Charlottetown handcuffed on approving density builds without revised official plan: deputy mayor

Charlottetown's deputy mayor says she's confident Charlottetown will see more density once the city's official plan is complete — but that won't happen until at least September.

Her comment comes as the city faces pressure from developers and the public to build higher, specifically in the downtown core.

"The downtown, and the City of Charlottetown as a whole, we need housing and we need density," Deputy Mayor Alanna Jankov said.

Jankov said she's hearing the frustration from residents and business owners, specifically over a recent planning staff decision to not recommend an eight-storey apartment building in the city's downtown area.

That apartment building would have provided 158 units, with 30 of them designated as affordable with rents lower than $1,000 a month, according to developer Tim Banks.

"I'm hearing frustration. I think that it's not really a secret that we need density," she said. "The biggest challenge right now is that we have a 20-year-old official plan."

The issue, Jankov said, is that staff are currently working to completely revise Charlottetown's official plan — which is the guiding document for all things development and land use in city limits. 

The official plan the city is working with now was developed in 1999 and adopted in 2005 and the city has said before that it "no longer meets the current needs of our growing community."

The city anticipated that the new official plan would be before council for approval this summer, but that hasn't happened. As a result of that, staff members in the planning department are currently using and relying on the old official plan until the new one replaces it.

"I would hope that by September we should have our official plan, and zoning and development bylaw updated," Jankov said, adding that council does have the power to make amendments to the current official plan to allow dense builds but that process could take months.

"We cannot continue with this urban sprawl. We need to combine our development along our bus lines and where our water and sewer is already, which can help with housing to be more affordable as well."