Business blasts new Iqaluit zoning bylaw

SEAN McKIBBON
Nunatsiaq News

IQALUIT — A new Iqaluit zoning bylaw that would have required all new buildings in Iqaluit — except for single family homes — to have paved parking lots has been scrapped by Iqaluit Town Council after a frosty reception from the local business community.

Town planners say bylaw 490 was to have set out a definitive zoning bylaw to take Nunavut’s capital into the future, but business representatives say the document, prepared by planning firm J.L. Richards Associates Ltd. of Ottawa, was riddled with vague and contradictory rules.

The Town’s development committee ordered municipal staff to send the bylaw back for changes after the Iqaluit Chamber of Commerce sent a letter to the town outlining a number of concerns with the bylaw and demanding that the public have an opportunity to comment on it before it passed any further readings.

“There are a whole lot of problems,” said Chamber of Commerce President Cheri Kemp Kinnear.

She said business owners and residents have a number of things to be concerned about, and that the council made the right move in pulling the bylaw back.

“It’s another case of them taking a law from the south and trying to apply it up here in the North,” said Monica Ell, a member of the Iqaluit Chamber of Commerce and the owner of Arctic Creations.

Ell cited restrictions on the number of people who could work out of a home-based business as just one example of a rule that doesn’t fit Iqaluit. The bylaw would have allowed no more than two people who weren’t family members to work on a business based in someone’s home.

“Why put in regulations and laws that make it hard for people who want to work? When you look at the unemployment record in this town you would think they would want to promote employment,” Ell said.

The bylaw also contained rules specifying where vehicles should be parked and how wide driveways should be.

Business people also had problems with a table in the bylaw requiring a certain number of shipping bays according to the square footage of buildings. Under the scrapped bylaw, a store the size of Arctic Ventures would need three loading bays, not one.

“Some of the requirements of the bylaw are obviously imported from some bylaw from the south and are unrealistic for a town the size of Iqaluit where there is only one freight truck that pulls up in a day and not a half dozen,” said Iqaluit businessman Ken Harper.

Harper said that changes to rules on parking, building density, and lot setbacks should concern all Iqaluit residents and not only developers and business people such as himself.

“I think that there is a lot of very good work that has gone into the preparation of this bylaw. It just needs to be reviewed by the public and the business community,” Harper said.

Iqaluit officials now say consultation will happen. The Town of Iqaluit’s development officer, Matthew Hough, said that the bylaw is being revamped and should be ready for review along with a new general plan for the town in about three weeks.

Hough said the move towards a new general plan and zoning bylaw was an attempt to address the weakness of the old 1996 zoning bylaw.

“It’s full of loop holes. It’s not very specific. It’s useless,” said Hough. The new bylaw was an attempt to close those loop holes and avoid situations that currently plague the town, such as residential units in the middle of industrial zones.

It was also an effort to plan for the future, he said. He said concerns over parking and paving in the new bylaw were worth a “healthy debate.”

“If we’re going to be looking at paving our roads maybe that’s something we want to consider. On the other hand maybe it isn’t. That’s why we’re going to public consultation,” he said.