WESTLOCK — The Town of Westlock’s Municipal Development Plan (MDP) is currently undergoing a refresh to ensure it continues to align with the town’s goals and the community’s needs.
Councillors heard details of the refresh, including highlights of the draft plan and the project’s progress from director of planning and development, Danielle Pougher, during a committee of the whole meeting March 18.
The town’s MDP was passed in 2015 and acts as the framework “that essentially sets out how the town will develop over the next 20 years,” noted Pougher.
“We’ve been working on a refresh of our municipal development plan since early last year. Tonight’s presentation is to give council an update on where we are with the project before we head into our next round of public engagement,” she said.
The MDP refresh project will be completed in five stages, with completion expected in late 2024. Phase three of the project — the draft plan, was recently completed by administration and phase four is set to begin later this spring.
During her presentation, Pougher noted some of the key highlights and major revisions to the draft plan, which include an updated, streamlined vision; refined guiding principles, new and expanded general policy themes and a re-imagined community concept which introduces two new policy areas — greater downtown and a transitional corridor.
“The first of those is the greater downtown policy area … it’s a very good area in order to support and add vibrancy to the downtown core, kind of a target growth area to support the downtown core and revitalized downtown that the community is desiring,” explained Pougher. “The intention of this policy area would be to support the downtown core and we would target and prioritize re-development, growth of complementary uses and the upkeep and renewal of older housing stock to this area.”
Pougher also noted some details about the second new policy area, a transitional corridor.
“This new policy area is intended to support that transitional area between the Highway 18 corridor and the low-density residential areas directly adjacent,” she said. “The policies in this area will focus on providing a pedestrian-friendly interface while maintaining the primary function of the highway as a traffic corridor, so supported uses in this area would include medium-density residential, mixed-use developments and neighbourhood-scale retail.”
The next phase of the project (Phase 4) will focus on further public engagement and consist of three open houses at the Rotary Spirit Centre, scheduled for April 18, April 25 and May 1. They will help confirm and further refine the MDP refresh draft plan.
“Now that we have a draft plan, we’re going out for phase two of public engagement,” said Pougher, noting the open houses are scheduled at various times. “The purpose of the open houses is to get further feedback on all the changes and then to further refine (the MDP) before it comes back for adoption.”
