Iqaluit eyes expansion with new 20-year plan

Consultant Michelle Armstrong of FoTenn Consultants pitches the City of Iqaluit’s new general plan to residents at a public hearing at the Arctic Winter Games arena Wednesday. The plan envisions three major new developments, enough land to accommodate the city’s projected population growth to 13,000 by 2030. (PHOTO BY CHRIS WINDEYER)

Iqaluit needs more space to build enough homes to accommodate a population expected to hit 13,000 by 2030.

“We have a crisis: a shortage of land,” Michele Bertol, the city’s director of planning and lands, said during a special city council meeting Thursday.

That meeting, to brief councillors on the early stages of the city’s new general plan, came on the heels of a series of public meetings to gauge reaction to the plan.

Bertol said the city needs to develop new areas to build in because the existing city footprint can’t hold many more people. Only a few pockets of Inuit-owned land, which may be developed over the next few years, could take the pressure off, Bertol said.

So city staff are eyeing three parcels of land totalling 36.2 hectares: a massive expansion of the Lake Subdivision along the Road to Nowhere, five pockets of land along Apex Road between the Arctic Winter Games arena and the Hudson Bay buildings and a third development on the hills overlooking Frobisher Bay, between Tundra Ridge and Tundra Valley.

The new developments would also contain room for commercial and green space and room for around 1,200 housing units.

“We need all of them if we want to meet the demand of the population for housing,” Bertol said.

But public hearings revealed a divide between Iqalummiut who want to see bigger lots for single-family homes and those who want higher density development. It’s a common dilemma for cities.

Low-density development is expensive to serve with utilities, while some people feel high-density development in unhealthy and unattractive.

“It’s a choice that this community has to make,” Bertol said.

A smaller fourth parcel is off the table because it would cost $1.4 million per hectare for the city to develop, Bertol said. The other areas would cost between $680,000 and $1.2 million per hectare to develop.

The plan also envisions light industrial development in the Upper Base area and heavier industry in the West 40 on land that is, for the time being, still owned by the airport.

Residents don’t like the idea of building ugly factories on what many consider the gateway to the Sylvia Grinnell River, Bertol said. But the city is hemmed in on three sides by the ocean, airport and Sylvia Grinnell territorial park reserve.

Bertol said the city is out of land suitable for light and heavy industry. “We have to find new land for these two uses.”

The planning report also found that future growth will mean the reservoir at Lake Geraldine won’t be able to hold enough water. It recommends the city expand the watershed protection area to include the upper Apex River. Part of that watershed lies outside current city limits, so the city would have to expand for that to happen.

The report also recommends:
• more green space, playgournds and basketball courts, especially in high-density neighbourhoods;
• expanding the high-density core area outward along Federal Road;
• looking at reintroducing a public transit system and developing a bicycle plan;
• designating land between the dump and Inuit Head for a future deepwater port;
• improving the way the city informs residents about development permits, possibly with a city hotline and bulletin boards.
• banning sealift containers in the core area and considering whether to outlaw them altogether.

The next step for city staff is to generate a draft general plan by late November. Bertol said a bylaw should be ready for first reading in early January.

The city is required to update its general plan every five years.