For the past 10 years, the amount of land available for new commercial developments in Jasper has been highly restricted and you literally had to be lucky in order to get approval for a project.

A lottery process has been used since 2001 to determine which commercial projects went forward and which were put on hold, after the federal government placed a strict cap on the amount of land that can be used for new developments within the townsite.

It’s a process described as “equally unfair to everyone” and a “goofy way to do municipal planning” by Verne Balding, director of corporate and legislative services for the municipality.

Balding will be pleased to see the lottery system come to an end once the new Jasper Community Sustainability Plan is approved by Parliament, which is expected to happen in the current parliamentary session. That will be the last step before the plan – which has now been signed by municipal councillors, Parks Canada officials and the minister of the environment – takes effect. 

“The lottery allocation for development will not continue subsequent to the date of approval of this plan,” the document states. Instead: “Development allocations will be administered by the municipality subject to the annual rate of growth, the commercial cap, and applicable land use policies and regulations.”

Ken Kuzminski, president of the Jasper Park Chamber of Commerce, also welcomes the looming demise of the development lottery.

“It’s going to be a step forward for the municipality and everybody in the town to be able to plan the community we want to live in, with decisions made here,” he said. “To have that control by local people, to actually say ‘Hey, these are our needs, these are the directions we want to take’ would be great, instead of having everything dictated to us.”

Balding said the lottery system dates back a decade, when Ottawa placed a strict cap on commercial development in Jasper in terms of square footage. Roughly 100,000 square feet over and above what was already in the ground would be allowed, and in the past 10 years about half of that has been used up. Once the remaining square footage is used, he said, developers “will have to knock something down to put something else up.”

The cap remains in place under the new sustainability plan; it’s just the method by which new developments are approved that will change. Some of the criteria for deciding which projects are given the go-ahead are listed in the sidebar on this page.

Kuzminski expects that there will still be challenges with the new system, once it is established, but as long as the municipality’s decision-making process is transparent he believes it will be a major improvement over the lottery.

“As long as people know what’s going on and the information’s out there, I think it will be better than just a random draw,” he said. “It’ll take away that uncertainty.”

New commercial development rules

To replace the old the lottery system, the following criteria will be used to evaluate all proposed commercial development in Jasper:

• Adherence to the prescribed limits to growth and commercial allocation strategy;

• Contribution to the maintenance of ecological integrity through green building practices reflecting the No Net Negative Environmental Impact principle;

• Compliance with appropriate use and environmental stewardship policies, architectural motif, zoning, development review criteria and other regulatory requirements, as stipulated in this Plan and in other documents of Parks Canada, the Municipality of Jasper and other agencies;

• Protection and retention of housing for community needs;

• Infill of commercial lots;

• Protection of resident-oriented services;

• Maintenance of heritage and desired community character;

• Such additional criteria as may be developed in consultation with the community based on the nature and scope of the proposed project.

~ Source: Jasper Community Sustainability Plan, page 53.