Colinton residents are invited out again to the Colinton Community Hall tonight (Aug. 19) at 7 p.m. for a public consultation with county experts to give feedback on the draft concept for an area structure plan (ASP) for the area.
"I'm going to be showing the community the current zoning districts, and I am going to show them a proposed conceptual map, and that's going to contain future potential district changes," said Athabasca County land use planner Neil Chadda.
This will be the second such public consultation for the Colinton ASP. The first was on July 16.
Chadda has developed the draft concept in a way that takes into consideration feedback from a continuing survey he administered to Colinton residents.
The survey asks Colinton residents what features they would like to see in their community in the longer term. Chadda said he has received "an extremely good response" of almost 50 per cent so far.
"Through the survey, people said they like trails, they like green spaces, they like maybe some space for commercial (land)," said Chadda.
He said at a recent Colinton ASP steering committee meeting, he ran a design workshop and "had steering committee members put on the hat of being a planner, and they helped design a potential map that they'd like to see," said Chadda.
Some of the issues to be discussed tonight in order to obtain further public input are:
-A proposed location for the Trans Canada Trail through the hamlet
-The transformation of the current old CNR land, which currently has a commercial land designation, into a mix of residential and park land
-More open green spaces in the hamlet connected by the proposed trail network
-More land conservation, including protection of lands that have dangerous slopes in the hamlet
-Planning for environmental impacts of water features in the hamlet: according to the concept, there will be a buffer of land around water features to help mitigate any negative impacts as a result of potential flooding.
"I'm taking more of a hands-on approach, because the best way to get community support is to have the community share their ideas on what they'd like to see," said Chadda.
"Everybody's opinion to me … matters."
