Good morning Diane;

I recently received an email from you in regards to this heated debate.  Although I don’t live in the Shawnee/Evergreen area, my parents do.  My father, mother and I have had many conversations concerning this subject. 

From what I understand there has been some less than professional maneuvers by the group of opportunist entrepreneurs in their attempt to manipulate the City and the system to accommodate their land use changes to suite their development needs.  I also understand that most residents of Shawnee Slopes and Evergreen are opposed to this dramatic land use change, and that it contravenes the original land use purposes put in place by the Shaw family.

I agree with my parents that development of this golf course into 1100 homes would create residential traffic chaos and congestion.  Doesn’t Calgary have enough of these nightmares already?  Is it really necessary to create another one?  The area really doesn’t have the infrastructure to support this kind of traffic volume.

Once City Hall gives it’s stamp of approval to change the land use designation, every golf course and green space within the City will be up for grabs by redevelopers, and you can bet they will use this example as ammunition to support their agenda.

If these entrepreneurs are so determined to build 1100 homes, show them a spot well outside the city, or better yet, show them a map of Halifax!

Regards,

Janet

P.S.  I noticed that the Town Hall Meeting has been postponed due to developer delay – what exactly is developer delay?

Janet McLeod
Woodlands Community

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The response is removed due to privacy concerns from Alderman Diane Colley-Urquhart's office.

The city of Calgary's presentation to LUMAC and the Shawnee-Evergreen Board of Directors on the rezoning process Geo-Energy will have to go through in order to build housing on the Shaw-nee Slopes. As of February 6, 2010 your Shawnee-Evergreen Board have not received any formal documentation for rezoning.

Complete pdf Presentation: Rezoning Process Presentation.pdf (2.44 mb)

As promised at community meetings and in the SECA newsletters, we are updating you on the status of Geo-Energy's land use change application which was submitted to the City in mid October 2009.

On January 6, 2010 Alderman Diane Colley Urquhart informed SECA that the City Planning Department (CPD) had advised her that Geo-Energy completed the formal submission of their land use change application for the Shaw-nee Slopes golf course, late last fall. The CPD spent the last couple of months working with the applicant to ensure completeness of the application and will be officially distributing it to all key stakeholders sometime this month. Our Alderman has scheduled a meeting of the Ward 13 Land Use Mobility and Advisory Committee to which the SECA executive has been invited along with members of City administration land use and planning who will be sharing the timelines on the Shaw-nee golf course application going forward. 

Please be assured that as soon as the SECA Board has received and reviewed this application, we will call a town-hall meeting, most likely in February, to share its contents with the community.  Although the application is yet to be circulated, we anticipate that it will essentially follow the proposal provided at Geo-Energy's January 22, 2009 presentation to the community at the Delta Calgary South (see http://shawneeslopesdevelopment.ca/). It is the responsibility of the applicant to conduct consultation meetings with key stakeholders which we will insist includes an “open house” meeting for all residents of the Community. We continue to believe that their application is without merit and we will fight vigorously to retain the current land use designation of Special Purpose - Recreation.

We will notify you in an email and update the SECA web site (http://www.shawnee-evergreen.net /) as soon as the application has been received. A detailed assessment of the application will then be undertaken by the SECA Land Use Committee. We anticipate that this will be a very long process, likely spanning several years. Many issues will need to be addressed in the intervening period and a steady and consistent volunteer base is essential. Fortunately we have had a very positive response from our members. As specific needs are identified we will detail them and call for additional volunteers.

Gloria Dingwall, President

Hi All:

In case you haven't heard it, the story about the sale of the golf course was on this morning's CBC news as I was driving to work.  It pretty much said that a community landmark could be bulldozed if rezoning is approved but people in the community planned to fight.  The reporter, Colleen Underwood had obviously spoken to someone from Geo-Energy as well as Alderman Diane Colley-Urquhart.  The report stated that GE plans to build 600 multi-family and 400 single family homes; keep the course open for another year and will have the rezoning application into the City by September.  Colley-Urquhart said she is completely against it and that Geo-Energy may have bought themselves a park.

Thanks.
President
Gloria Dingwall

The SECA Board has learned that the land title, transferring ownership of the land from Shaw Construction (Shaw-Nee Slopes) to Geo-Energy Enterprises Ltd, (The Developer)  took place on July 7, 2009.  For now, Geo Energy is continuing to operate the golf course. When they apply to the City to have the land rezoned for residential development, the community association will oppose it. We will update you with more information when we have it.  

Gloria Dingwall

President

Shawnee-Evergreen Community Association