Saskatoon 'transit villages' plan sparks debate over housing density

A city planning document for the Bus Rapid Transit system (BRT) sparked controversy over the weekend, with three civic election candidates alleging Confederation Mall was at risk of being demolished and replaced with dense housing.

Mayoral candidates Don Atchison and Cary Tarasoff, along with Ward 3 candidate Robert Pearce, took to social media on the weekend to bring up issues about the BRT plan, now dubbed LINQ.

The 2019 plan shows photos of the mall site, with large areas of property on surrounding land redeveloped for dense housing for 10,000 people and a new bus terminal.

The BRT plan also includes similar transit villages in University Heights at the corner of Attridge Drive and McDormand Drive, and at the Centre Mall.

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“It’s what is being proposed through The City of Saskatoon Transit Villages report. Now, that doesn't mean that it's going to happen tomorrow or the next day, but the interesting part is that it's been endorsed by council. The next step is implementation,” Atchison told CTV News.

For Tarasoff, the plan doesn’t fit the neighbourhood.

“They need everything to change here in Confederation, instead of them designing a system that works with everything here,” Cary Tarasoff says.

But the city says the plans were for information purposes only — it can’t force the landowners to redevelop, and didn’t intend to.

“The City of Saskatoon is aware of information circulating on social media and in the community regarding the Bus Rapid Transit plan for Confederation Mall,” a spokesperson said in a statement.

“The city is not pursuing redevelopment of Confederation Mall. Any future redevelopment of the site would be up to the landowners.”

Tarasoff and Atchison question why costly and in-depth research was already completed for the Confederation plan, which also included the land to the west of the mall that currently houses Superstore.

“If you’re not going to do it, then why do you have it there? That's the biggest challenge of all. If you say you're not going to do it, go back and say, ‘we're not going to do it,’ and remove it,” Atchison said.

The city says the plans “established a vision and guiding principles to guide future development, which could be considered in the future, should the owners express interest in redeveloping.”

According to Tarasoff, even if it’s only speculative, the plan is another example of how the city officials disregard the west side of the city.

“All the businesses here, the grocery stores that feed people that are the draw [to] this community, and why would they even do any kind of plan that would call for those to be gone?”

The civic election is November 13.