A plan for design guidelines for soon-to-come Cochrane neighbourhoods was unanimously approved during May 13’s council meeting.
The Integrated Neighbourhood Design Guidelines were developed to provide goals for residents and developers to meet, and to provide options on how to achieve those goals.
The design principles touched on within the guidelines aim to maintain Cochrane’s natural landscape and views, integrate a variety of housing options, ensure adequate amenities, open spaces, pathways and commercial nodes for the neighbourhoods — all in an attempt to create healthy, unique, creative communities.
“We don’t want a solid wall of housing,” said Candace Banack, town development planner. “We want to increase density while keeping single-family character in the neighbourhood.”
To achieve this, the guidelines made suggestions for residents and/or developers to keep in mind, such as limited number of units per town home, or designing town homes to resemble single family dwellings with additional entrances tucked out of sight.
While mayor Truper McBride acknowledged the guidelines identified how council would like to see Cochrane look in the future, he felt the document left some opening for interpretation.
“We want these to be very strong guidelines,” said McBride. “The wording has to be very clear.”
While town staff explained the softened wording allowed for architectural creativity, councillor Jeff Toews expressed his concern for how the guidelines would be implemented.
“In a lot of these areas, you hit the ball out of the park — I like the look of 99 per cent of this,” said Toews. “My concern is: Does this have any teeth?”
Yes, replied Kathy Dietrich, senior manager of planning and engineering with the town.
“There’s such clear direction — it has more teeth than it’s given credit for.”
For Tara McFadden, these design guidelines will be what separated Cochrane from nearby Calgary. The guidelines will advocate the Cochrane Sustainability Plan, further aligning the plans and actions of the Town of Cochrane.
