Fredericton council agrees to spend $1M in hopes of spurring creation of 200 apartment units | CBC News

Fredericton councillors have agreed to spend $1 million in the hopes that the extension of a road and municipal services will spur the creation of 200 new apartment units in the city.

The money will be spent extending Brown Boulevard west by 115 metres in order to provide access and services to a 2.8-hectare plot of city-owned land. The plan is to sell the land to developers keen to build affordable housing, said Ken Forrest, planning director for the city.

“The city’s affordable-housing strategy identifies making city-owned lands available for affordable housing as a priority, and this is one of the few areas where the city had an inventory of land and through the extension of servicing, we’re able to make city-owned land available for that purpose,” Forrest said.

Forrest said once the road is extended and services are installed, the city will seek expressions of interest from private developers and not-for-profit organizations interested in building affordable housing on the land.

Decision earlier put on hold

The vote by council Monday night came four months after the same agenda item was deferred indefinitely following disagreement among councillors about whether the city should go ahead with extending the road, located at the intersection of Cliffe Street.

The city had originally planned to sell an eight-hectare plot of land north of the extended street to the Fredericton Christian Academy, and use the revenue from the sale to fund the cost to build the new street and extend the water and sewer services it would need for development.

But the private school withdrew from the deal, leaving councillors with the choice of abandoning the extension altogether, or proactively funding it.

On Monday, Coun. Jason Lejeune brought the motion back to council, however, Coun. Steven Hicks still had concerns about the plan.

Hicks pointed to existing traffic woes residents in his ward are already facing, namely due to the reduction of the Marysville Bridge to one lane. He said he’s worried that more construction in the area could impact residents.

He ultimately voted in favour of the plan, but only after he successfully added an amendment to the motion, which stipulates adding a 10-metre buffer zone between any future Cliffe Street extension and homes that already exist to the east of the right of way.

“I think some of the longer-term concerns I have is with the neighbouring properties,” said Hicks, noting that the city has even more land in the Cliffe Street-Brown Boulevard area that could later be developed.

“This is a very long stretch [of city-owned land] and there’s a good chance that this land is going to be developed for the next 20 years.”

Serviced city land running scarce

The decision Monday night came after city staff briefed councillors on the inventory of city-owned land, said Fredericton Mayor Kate Rogers.

Rogers said while the city’s affordable-housing strategy seeks to make municipal land available for new housing, there’s currently very little city land that’s serviced with water and sewer.

“So knowing that there is a scarcity of land, in particular serviced land, we … were just looking for a path to fulfilling those [affordable-housing] objectives and this was one way to do that,” she said.

Asked about the $1-million price tag, Rogers said it was less of a concern on Monday, considering there are new funding sources that weren’t available when the motion was first considered last October.

Those include a $635,377 affordable-housing grant from the New Brunswick Regional Development Corporation, as well as $10 million in Accelerator Housing Fund money from the federal government.