Underutilized Land Improvement Strategy

PRIORITIES AND PLANNING COMMITTEE - JUNE 20, 2019

The Committee adopted a resolution to concur in the recommendation contained in the report. Recommendation #3 does not require City Council approval.

Mayor Michael Fougere (Chairperson) and Councillors:  Lori Bresciani, Sharron Bryce, Jerry Flegel, Bob Hawkins, Jason Mancinelli, Joel Murray, Andrew Stevens and Barbara Young were present during consideration of this report by the Priorities and Planning Committee.

The Priorities and Planning Committee, at its meeting held on June 20, 2019, considered the following report from the Administration:

RECOMMENDATION

1.              That the Underutilized Land Improvement Strategy in Appendix A be approved.

2.              That CR18-126 be removed from the list of outstanding items for City Council.

3.              That this report be forwarded to the July 29, 2019 City Council meeting for approval.

CONCLUSION

Design Regina: The Official Community Play Bylaw 2013-48 (OCP) directs residential and employment growth and development to occur in existing areas of the city, as well as on the periphery. In particular, an intensification goal was established to direct at least 30 per cent of new population to existing urban areas, redevelopment of existing underutilized lands will be required. Underutilized lands include vacant lots, surface parking lots and vacant buildings.

Administration has developed a proposed Underutilized Land Improvement Strategy (Strategy), attached as Appendix A, to address barriers to private sector investment of underutilized sites using recommendations identified in the Underutilized Land Study (Study).  The Study was completed by V3 Companies of Canada Ltd. in association with Praxis Consulting and Trace Associates (Consultant) and endorsed by City Council on December 17, 2018.

The Strategy is comprised of goals that describe the intended outcomes and actions for the City to undertake in the immediate, short, medium and long term. Implementation of the Strategy will foster redevelopment of underutilized lands and progress on achieving the OCP’s Community Priorities to complete neighbourhoods, support diverse housing options, achieve financial viability, and foster economic prosperity. Actions in the Strategy that require funding will proceed through the regular budget process.

BACKGROUND

The OCP states that 30 per cent of the City’s growth shall be directed to existing urban areas to ensure long-term sustainable growth and enhancement of the urban form. Furthermore, the OCP directs 10,000 new residents to the City Centre over the life of the OCP. The OCP’s City Centre and Intensification Boundary are illustrated in Figure 1.

Since the OCP was adopted by City Council in 2013, new construction has not met the OCP policy with the rate of intensification declining each consecutive year from 26 per cent in 2014, to five per cent in 2017, to four per cent in 2018. This has been due to a number of factors, including overbuilding of some types of housing during the period of high growth, policy changes, and an ample supply of serviced greenfield land.

Following the OCP’s approval, Administration developed and has been implementing an Intensification Work Plan (IWP) comprised of projects that support intensification. Information on the IWP can be found at regina.ca/Planning. The IWP identified the Study followed by the Strategy to investigate, seek recommendations, and then determine how the City will address the regulatory, environmental and economic barriers to attracting new private sector investment in the city’s underutilized properties.

On December 17, 2018, City Council considered CR18-126 which included endorsing the Study as well as approving the recommendations:

“That Administration be directed to develop an Underutilized Land Improvement Strategy based on the Underutilized Land Study’s recommendations as outlined in Appendix A.”

and

“That Administration submit the Underutilized Land Improvement Strategy to City Council for approval by Q4 of 2019.”

This report addresses these recommendations.

DISCUSSION

The redevelopment of underutilized lands improves the resiliency of the City by bringing about several economic, environmental and social benefits, including increased tax assessment, remediation of contaminated land within Regina and acting as a catalyst for new investment in the underutilized sites within a neighbourhood.

The purpose of the Strategy is to determine the goals and actions for the City to encourage reinvestment in vacant and underutilized sites. As a result, it is a tool to support progress on the OCP intensification target and foster progress on its Community Priorities, including economic prosperity, long-term financial viability, availability of housing and transportation options, and completion and revitalization of neighbourhoods.

The Study was a key input to the development of the Strategy. In particular, the barriers to the redevelopment of underutilized sites identified by stakeholders through, the development of the Study, were used to develop the Strategy Goals; the recommendations from the Consultant on how to address the barriers informed the strategic Actions. As well, the Federation of Canadian Municipalities’ Leadership in Brownfield Renewal program was reviewed for applicable best practices and lessons learned from other communities. As well, the City’s own existing and planned initiatives were reviewed. This revealed that the City had already put initiatives in motion as part of the IWP that should also address barriers to the redevelopment of underutilized sites. As such, it became clear that the Strategy could be a tool to connect existing initiatives, some that were identified as being part of the IWP and some that were not, under a common umbrella.

Goals

Five Goals were developed that describe the intended outcomes of this Strategy by responding to the barriers that were identified through the Study.

In the Study, the Consultant explored barriers in each of the following areas with stakeholders:

·         Regulatory

·         Approval process

·         Brownfields

·         Financial

·         Infrastructure

·         Social

·         Market

These barriers were reflected on and considered in the development of the following Strategy Goals:

While there was not specific feedback in the Study related to the fifth Goal, Monitoring, it is good practice to review progress resulting from implementation of actions and refine as needed to ensure investments are addressing the barriers, more directly related to the other four Goals, as intended.

Strategic Actions

Strategic Actions to meet each Goal were developed, largely drawing on the recommendations from the Study, but also considering best practices from elsewhere as well as projects planned and underway at the City.

The Strategic Actions are identified by Goal and organized around:

·          Meeting Goals and addressing barriers to the redevelopment of underutilized sites;

·          Focusing efforts on completing existing projects;

·          Adding an underutilized land lens to better address specific barriers as existing projects are completed;

·          Building on initiatives that have been started and filling gaps over time; and

·          Reflecting on progress and refining initiatives regularly to respond to changing conditions.

All recommendations from the Study were captured within the Strategy except the following three:

-          Develop a neighbourhood clean-up campaign;

-          Invest in bus rapid transit; and

-          Lobby for tax legislation changes to allow for site-specific tax measures to penalize landowners of underutilized lands who have removed the sites from the marketplace.

These actions were considered but ultimately not felt to be major drivers required to encourage redevelopment of underutilized lands. These Study recommendations were identified as coming from the consultant’s own experience or best practices and when reflected on in the Regina context, they did not address the barriers identified by stakeholders or encourage development of underutilized lands in a significant way. As the Strategy is reviewed over time, these actions could be revisited and included; however, for now the focus has been directed on other actions. Stakeholder consultations undertaken as part of this Strategy’s development did not raise concerns about this approach.

The timing for implementation of Strategic Actions was broken down into the following categories based on when they would start. Many actions once started are intended to be ongoing, and therefore over time, momentum will build, and the overall program will strengthen as new initiatives are advanced.

              Immediately                            2019 (planned projects and projects already underway)

              Short-term                            2020 – 2021

              Medium-term                            2022 – 2024

              Long-term                            2025 – 2030 

Implementation

Upon City Council approval of the Strategy, it will be used by Administration to guide its work to foster reinvestment in underutilized land. As noted in the chart below, over half the Actions are to be initiated in the first three years.

Since many actions in the earlier timeframes are intended to be ongoing, the number of ‘new’ long-term actions is relatively low. As well, considering and reflecting on the impact of the earlier projects being implemented to determine what actions may be needed post-2024 will be important to ensure they are relevant. A Strategic Action under Monitoring is to conduct a major Strategy review in five years which will create an opportunity to review the progress that has been made, assess the market and other conditions at the time, and determine what actions are needed to continue movement towards the Goals effectively.

Major City initiatives that are planned for 2019 or underway, that will collectively address the barriers and create conditions to advance the Actions, include:

·         The new Zoning Bylaw;

·         Planning and Building Software;

·         The Railyard Renewal Project; and

·         Developing Neighbourhood Plans.

In particular, advancing the development of Neighbourhood Plans in existing areas will allow a number of Actions to be considered as part of broader community processes. For instance, through developing a Neighbourhood Plan, vacant and underutilized sites will be identified and the opportunity that they represent can be explored and discussed. It also set the stage to talk about intensification and the value that investing in underutilized sites has for the area, as well as the broader community, which is intended to improve public awareness and education about intensification.

As well, the recent re-organization of the City’s Administration resulted in bringing together the Planning and Development Services Departments into a single Department. This was a purposeful decision that was made to deliver faster and more efficient customer service for development applications. 

Stakeholder Consultation

Stakeholders who were involved in the facilitated sessions that occurred through the Study were invited to continue the conversation and contribute to developing the Strategy. A workshop was held on March 20, 2019 and ten stakeholders from the development industry, affordable housing providers, and Downtown and Warehouse Business Improvement Districts participated in a dialogue that focused on reviewing the draft Goals and Strategic Actions. Participants were asked to consider what they appreciated, what concerns they had, and what else should be done to refine the goals and strategies. Following the workshop, stakeholders also had the opportunity to submit written comments. This feedback was used to refine the Strategy; Administration’s responses to the comments were shared with stakeholders in May 2019 and can be found in Appendix B.

Among the comments, feedback that seemed to be underscored was the need for the City to recognize the financial impact that the barriers can have on the private sector’s interest and ability to reinvest in underutilized sites: projects need to be financially viable to proceed and there are multiple concerns that make this a challenge. So, while a barrier may have been identified as a process or regulatory barrier, they ultimately can result in increased costs and affect the bottom-line of development, rendering it unviable. It was also reiterated that lack of infrastructure condition and capacity information is a significant barrier and stakeholders requested better information and for the City to publicly invest in infrastructure improvements to remove the uncertainty of infrastructure from the equation.

Administration recognizes these concerns and the Strategy has been developed to seek to address them. Ongoing monitoring of the effectiveness has also been included within the Strategy.

RECOMMENDATION IMPLICATIONS

Financial Implications

$115,000 from Current Contributions were allocated to fund the development of the Study and subsequently the Strategy. As well, the Federation of Canadian Municipalities’ conditionally approved a grant of up to 50 per cent of the actual project costs through the Green Municipal Fund for the cost of preparing the Study and Strategy. A condition of the funding is that the Strategy be approved by April of 2020; as such, by advancing this Strategy in the summer of 2019 this requirement will be met.  

In terms of future costs, once the Strategy is approved, Administration will use it to guide its work and consider it in business planning. Staff capacity and financial requirements to advance new initiatives will be determined as those projects proceed and the specifics are determined.

Many Strategic Actions are already underway and have funding in place, such as the new Zoning Bylaw, Neighbourhood Planning, and the Planning and Building Software. Others can be advanced with no additional resources, such as integrating conversations about how to pre-zone vacant sites to the ultimately desired land use as part of Neighbourhood Planning, for example.

There are some projects that will require new funding, such as implementing demonstration projects or incentive programs. In these cases, the funding request would be submitted through the standard budget process and only after Council adopts the budget will investments be approved.

Administration has been mindful about the financial implications of developing a Strategy of this nature. Many of the Actions identified are integrated into existing projects and initiatives and may become a lens to be used through those existing Plans. For example, it is recognized through the Water and Wastewater Master Plans that upgrades to infrastructure will be required to support intensification. As well, an Action in this Strategy is to determine a targeted area (or areas) to focus intensification and thereby provide more specific direction for this investment in infrastructure improvements. In many ways, this Strategy is about pulling together existing work under a common umbrella and facilitate better coordination and decision-making.

Additional investment will also be required to advance some of the Actions in the Strategy to fill gaps in the City’s existing work plans. The Strategy directs these investments to be targeted to ensure intended outcomes can be met and not spread thinly so as to not dilute the impact.

Through the implementation of this Strategy, fostering redevelopment of underutilized sites has the opportunity to improve the City’s financial viability both by increasing the taxes collected from these sites within established areas as well as reducing the long-term costs of maintaining and renewing infrastructure that would be required to support growth on the periphery.

Environmental Implications

This Strategy considers underutilized sites in a general sense and all vacant sites have the potential to be contaminated and require remediation depending on the land use.

Policy and/or Strategic Implications

The OCP provides policy direction for growth in Regina to a 300,000 population and sets the stage for its long-term development. The OCP also strives to achieve a 30 per cent infill target, which sees the addition of 20,000 new residents inside the Intensification Boundary, with 10,000 of the anticipated population directed to the City Centre area.

The Study provided a perspective on the constraints and opportunities of underutilized lands, as well as initiating a conversation towards innovative solutions to encourage infill development. The Strategy will set the stage for the City to support population growth and restoration of chronically vacant areas to active land uses.

The recommendations of this report strongly align with Section 2.10 of the OCP to support the creation of an intensification development strategy which addresses “potential obstacles to intensification and strategies to overcome them” and “incentives for encouraging intensification development”. In addition to the intensification polices of the OCP, the recommendations of this report align with the following OCP policies:

·         Promote the redevelopment of Brownfield and Bluefield properties (Section 8.5).

·         Decrease the number of vacant, non-taxable and underutilized lots (Section 8.3).

·         Explore Actions to convert vacant or underutilized properties within the City Centre (Section 7.9).

·         Identify and encourage the development of new economic opportunities (Section 12.5.2).

Comprehensive Housing Strategy

The Strategy supports Goal 30 of the Comprehensive Housing Strategy to “Support the redevelopment of brownfields, greyfields and bluefields for affordable housing development”.

Other Implications

None with respect to this report.

Accessibility Implications

None with respect to this report.

COMMUNICATIONS

Stakeholders have been notified that the Strategy recommendation is going to the Planning & Priorities Committee in June and will receive notification when the report is available online.

Upon City Council approval of this Strategy, it will be posted on Regina.ca and the decision will be shared with stakeholders who had been involved in its development. 

As specific Strategic Actions are advanced, the need for stakeholder engagement and communications will be considered and advanced on a project-by-project basis.

DELEGATED AUTHORITY

The recommendations contained in this report require City Council approval.

Respectfully submitted,

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