Calgary Minute: Noise Regulations, Jasper Supports, and Arena Design Revealed

Calgary Minute - Your weekly one-minute summary of Calgary politics

This Week In Calgary:

• The Infrastructure and Planning Committee will meet this morning at 8:30 am. The agenda includes the discussion of amendments to the Rocky View County/City of Calgary Intermunicipal Development Plan, as well as proposed changes to the Municipal Development Plan and Calgary Transportation Plan in connection with the Prairie Economic Gateway Initiative. The Committee will review recommendations for supporting this initiative, which aims to facilitate industrial development and enhance regional collaboration between urban and rural municipalities. Key topics of conversation will involve the creation of new policies, processes for collaborative planning, and the establishment of the Southeast Railway Corridor as a Key Focus Area.
  
  
• On Tuesday, at 9:30 am, there will be a City Council meeting. Council will discuss merging the BiodiverCity Advisory Committee and the Climate Advisory Committee. Also on the agenda are Local Access Fees - municipal fees charged on your electricity bill. The City originally decided to reduce the fee starting in 2027. However, the provincial government recently changed the law to require these fees to be reduced much sooner. Consequently, the City's new goal will be to implement these changes by January 1st, 2025.
  
  
• The Green Line Board will meet on Thursday at 9:00 am. No agenda is available for this meeting yet. Also on Thursday, at 1:00 pm, there will be a meeting of the Calgary Planning Commission. There are a few land use amendments on the agenda.

Last Week In Calgary:

• Mayor Jyoti Gondek issued an apology after the City’s wildfire evacuee reception centre was briefly closed Wednesday night, causing inconvenience for those seeking shelter from the devastating fire in Jasper. Many evacuees arrived at Shouldice Arena only to find it temporarily closed, though it reopened within 20 minutes and remained open overnight. The closure was due to a scheduling change prompted by a lack of evacuees the previous night. As of Thursday morning, 465 evacuees had registered in Calgary, but by Friday, 960 had checked in. The City also sent firefighters to Jasper to assist.
  
  
• The City unveiled designs for the new $926-million event centre, Scotia Place, which will replace the aging Scotiabank Saddledome. The arena will include an 18,000-seat venue, public plazas, an attached parkade, and a community rink. The financing of the project remains controversial, with taxpayers footing 96.7% of the bill in the short term, reducing to 69.5% in the long term. It was also revealed that the City paid nearly $1 million to US-based company CAA Icon to negotiate the new downtown arena deal with the Calgary Sports and Entertainment Corporation and the Calgary Stampede. Construction is set to begin this week and is expected to be completed by 2027.
  
  
• In other Scotia Place news, the Community Development Committee gave initial approval to relax noise regulations for the new event centre. The proposal would allow noise levels to continue at 64 dBA until midnight, instead of 10:00 pm, when they currently have to drop to just 50 dBA. Administration argued that the change is essential for the venue's full potential as a music venue and to avoid between $7 and $8 million in additional soundproofing costs. Ward 5 Coucillor Raj Dhaliwal was the lone Committee member to vote against the change due to concerns over the lack of resident consultation and the perception that the City is catering to developers' deadlines. Council as a whole will discuss the matter on Tuesday.

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