The first open house for the proposed Horse Creek housing development bordering Cochrane Lake was held at the Weedon Community Hall on June 22.
Development company UrbanStar put on the open house to engage interested residents in adjacent communities in a conversation about what the first phase of project will look like, timelines, and any other associated concerns they might have.
One of the first attendees, area resident Brian Muise, was disappointed there was no presentation to explain the overall project. Instead, display boards were set up and staff were on hand to answer questions. He left the open house early, but still has questions – mostly about water and traffic control.
“Cochrane’s a disaster right now. Hopefully the construction will sort some of it out, but I don’t know,” he said. “West of Cochrane is just unbelievable.”
Under best-case-scenario timelines, roadwork construction projects in Cochrane will have been just completed (2024 to 2025) when Horse Creek homes start to go up for sale. If both phases are approved, the development would ultimately add more than 1,200 new homes to the area.
Muise has lived on his acreage north of the Horse Creek project area for 35 years and is taken aback by the speed of growth in and around Cochrane these days.
“They said a combination of phase one and phase two would be 900 dwellings, with a possibility of 300 more,” he said. “That’s a lot of housing.”
It wasn’t clear whether Muise was encouraged or not by the fact the developer still has to gain approvals from Rocky View County (RVC).
“Anything that Rocky View gets involved with is, well, involved,” he said with a laugh.
“We’ve been here 35 years and people tell me Rocky View is the hardest municipality to deal with in Canada when it comes to getting building permits and just plain getting things done,” he said.
Muise added the last election may turn out to be a cause for hope in that regard.
“There’s a few new councillors on board there. That may help things out a little bit, I don’t know.”
Not wanting to cover all of RVC council with the same brush, he said Deputy Mayor Crystal Kissel was very responsive to local residents when they went to her with some speed control concerns on a local road.
He said the speed limits were reduced, which has made things a lot safer for people walking and riding horses along the rural road near him.
UrbanStar collaborated with Township Planning + Design Inc., a private planning firm, to develop the proposal for 113 hectares in RVC, adjacent to the Hamlet of Cochrane Lake.
Once public consultation is complete, they will submit their conceptual scheme to RVC for approval. The conceptual scheme is intended to guide community development into the future.
In September 2021, UrbanStar announced they were upgrading their original proposal for the first phase from 313 units to 949.
At the open house, UrbanStar Vice-President of Operations Andre Benson explained that increase came about after seeing what kind of densities the Calgary Municipal Region Board has been recommending for similar developments.
“The concept of the large one-acre, two-acre lots is not what they want to see, so we’re looking to be in alignment with the development they want to do out here,” he said.
The original timelines on the project website have been pushed back about a year, as the COVID-19 pandemic made meetings in general more challenging.
Pandemic or not, Benson said there is a lot of work involved in making a long-term housing project like this come to fruition.
“The approval process is a long process, there’s a lot of testing, there’s a lot of planning, there’s a lot of studying, and we want to make our concept as amenable to the community as possible,” he said.
“We don’t want to be considered somebody who’s a problem – we want to be a good neighbour.”
Muise was concerned about where the new water supply would come from for Horse Creek, and where it would go after it was used.
In a reply, Benson told the Eagle their investigation indicated that would not be an issue, as they would be tapping into the existing water line for Cochrane Lake and the surrounding area.
“I read some of the studies this week – the water’s fine. There’s more than adequate water,” he said.
The decision on where it would go after is yet to be made, and Benson said a wastewater treatment facility may have to be built.
The plan is to extend the existing utilities in the Hamlet of Cochrane Lake to Horse Creek.
The plan also calls for removal of the site area from the Cochrane North Area Structure Plan (ASP) and including it in the Hamlet ASP, which, according to UrbanStar, will allow “the new development to integrate with the Hamlet transportation networks, pathway system, and community character.”
An area structure plan is a long-range planning document and is the first step in obtaining planning approval from the county for a new community.
In RVC, ASPs are documents that are approved by council as bylaws. The plans provide a framework that describes the proposed land uses, density of population sequence of development, general location of major roadways, public utilities in the area, and any additional requirements that council may require.
The next stage in the process is the developers must amend the Hamlet ASP and submit a conceptual scheme to Rocky View County.
UrbanStar is a group of companies headquartered in Calgary that provides real estate asset management for investors, all of whom come from Japan.
Muise said he recently noticed another example of the speed of development around Cochrane – a proposed development north of Highway 1A on the hill opposite Gleneagles, also being championed by UrbanStar.
“They must’ve had a bunch of money come in,” he said. “That’s heavy duty, [building] two developments at the same time.”
The development Muise was referring to is Glendale Mountain View, a proposed community of 1,352 single-family homes, semi-detached houses, and townhouses on 272 hectares.
In December 2017, the concept plan was accepted for evaluation and included in the RVC proposed conceptual schemes list.
UrbanStar is still waiting for word back from RVC.
Members of the public can access the Horse Creek Open House Feedback form at USHorseCreek.com/open-house-feedback. The feedback form will be closed on July 6.
