Yellowknife councillors vote down Lundquist Road development bylaw

Yellowknife city councillors appeared to bow to residents’ concerns on Monday by voting down a bylaw that would have rezoned part of Lundquist Road for residential development.

Some residents have spent weeks calling for plans to build housing in the area to be scrapped. One of the reasons for opposition was a concern that development could threaten nearby wetlands.

City of Yellowknife planners had attempted to expand a nature preserve area and introduce a buffer zone to address that issue, but Mayor Ben Hendriksen had already indicated his unease at the proposal and how residents had responded.

On Monday evening, bylaw 5116 to rezone the land died on first reading when a majority of council opposed it.

Bylaw 5116 deals with land to the east of School Draw Avenue extending up to Lundquist Road. A separate bylaw to allow development west of School Draw Avenue passed first reading earlier in September and has not faced quite the same level of opposition.

Rob Warburton, Stacie Arden Smith and Steve Payne voted in favour of advancing bylaw 5116 past first reading. If that had happened, the bylaw would have still had to pass two more readings with a public hearing before becoming law.

“The nays have it,” Warburton, chairing Monday’s meeting, declared.

“It’s done. It’s dead, it’s finished,” he told audience members, some of whom had arrived bearing signs urging council to do away with the city’s stated vision for housing in the area.

It is possible that the city could come back, at some future point, with a separate plan for the area that still involves some development. However, the death of a bylaw like this at first reading implies the current council has no desire to move forward with that kind of initiative.

A vote on first reading does not come with a discussion period, so councillors had no opportunity during the meeting to explain their position.

While Hendriksen had expressed uncertainty about the prospect of developing around Lundquist Road, the mayor has more broadly asserted that the city urgently needs to free up land for housing somewhere, and has been frustrated by the NWT government in that ambition.

Hendriksen used a speech earlier this month to call for businesses to join the city in lobbying the GNWT for more land within Yellowknife’s municipal boundary to be transferred to city control.

He implied that part of the reason the city selects some areas for development is a lack of other land that might form a reasonable alternative.