Who Cares About Harbour Landing?

I still remember the Open Houses in 2007 about the new development in southwest Regina called Harbour Landing. The developers and the City planneres used pictures of Lakeview, especially the Hill Avenue mall, to reflect the type of neighbourhood they wanted to build. Walkable and liveable and with a nice town centre, just like we have in Lakeview. It sounded wonderful — a new neighbourhood I might actually want to live in.

So what happened? I’m not really sure. I know that once approval was given, the “concept plan” has been continually amended, to the point that the map looks a lot like every other suburban subdivision we have in Regina. Wide, curving streets that only head to wider roads. No town centre, just a ring of commercial space along the Lewvan and the airport. Sigh.

These days my interest in the new subdivision is restricted to traffic flow on the Lewvan (it’s harder to ride my bike to #1 highway these with all the construction), but there are more changes to Harbour Landing in the works:

• The developers are asking to amend the concept plan again.  Slightly smaller parks, less high density housing and a wee bit more commercial space.  City Council is considering the changes on November 17.  If you care about Harbour Landing, you have until November 13 to put a submission in to City Council.
• It appears the City will “entering into a front end servicing agreement with Dundee Developments and related long term debt financing” and will pass a new bylaw to make this happen.   Details of the bylaw won’t be available until November 14, and the bylaw will be considered on November 17, so if you care, better plan to spend next weekend reading over the bylaw.

Clearly, City Planning isn’t our strong suit.  We like where we live and can’t figure out why new neighbourhoods aren’t designed like our neighbourhood.  If it’s YOUR strong suit, drop us a line in the comments.  We’d love to get more insight into Harbour Landing and new suburbia in general.  If YOU CARE about the Harbour Landing development, sign up to be our Harbour Landing correspondent!