A public hearing into whether Calgary city council should repeal citywide rezoning officially closed Tuesday, after several days of presentations from the public.
However, questions of city administration and debate won’t begin until Wednesday.
Although 545 people signed up, 411 Calgarians spoke to city councillors over the eight sessions of the public hearing, which began on March 23.
City council also received nearly 3,300 written submissions from the public.
“I believe this doesn’t quite outdo the record that was set in the previous one, but we gave it the good old college try,” Calgary Mayor Jeromy Farkas said Tuesday morning.
The previous public hearing on citywide rezoning in April 2024 was the longest in the city’s history, with 736 speakers and more than 6,100 written submissions.
The contentious policy changed the city’s default residential zoning district changed to Residential Grade-oriented Infill District(R-CG) back in August 2024, which allowed for a variety of housing types to be developed on a single property like rowhouses and townhomes.
The policy change was aimed at boosting the supply and affordability of housing in the city.
Ward 4 Coun. DJ Kelly said he was surprised how “balanced” the feedback council received was, after the majority of speakers were against citywide rezoning during the 2024 public hearing.
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“Clearly the repeal blanket rezoning side is the majority but not as overwhelming as we thought it would be from the emails we received and from the written public submissions,” Kelly told reporters.
According to Ward 6 Coun. John Pantazopoulos, there was a general consensus that “density is not the problem.”
“It’s not incorporating the needs of the community, it’s not incorporating what exactly community wants,” he said.
“People expect and know that we have to have densification across the city, and it’s just making sure that their voice is heard.”
City council will now decide whether to repeal the policy, which would redesignate 306,774 residential properties back to their original low-density residential districts.
Councillors are also being asked to make changes to the R-CG zoning district including prohibiting mid-block rowhouses and townhouses, reducing lot coverage and capping heights at 10 a.m., as well as a clawback in density from 75 to 60 units per hectare, which would reduce the maximum number of units to three with an additional three secondary suites.
Ward 8 Coun. Nathaniel Schmidt said he heard concerns about the “ground level effects” redevelopment has had in certain communities.
“There’s other parts to this that need to be fixed regardless of how we vote on this,” he said. “When it comes to say construction fatigue, single family homes undergo construction too when they’re being built, and that’s just not a symptom of multi-family homes, that’s a symptom of how we’re doing construction.”
Shortly after Farkas closed the public hearing, city council narrowly voted in favour of taking a recess until Wednesday morning, when councillors will have a chance to ask questions of administration.
Councillors Rob Ward, Landon Johnston, Jennifer Wyness, Andre Chabot, Mike Jamieson, and Kim Tyers voted against the move.
According to Tyers, the break wasn’t necessary after a long weekend and given the time city council has spent on the issue already.
“I think everybody has an idea of what’s coming next,” Tyers told reporters. “To give more time to think and to plan and to strategize, to me I really don’t see the necessity in that, especially because we gave extra time over the weekend.”
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