Banff Heritage LUB Amendments Strategy
While at GSA, I was fortunate enough to get to work with the Town of Banff on how they could update their Land Use Bylaw to help support heritage properties. From the report:
“Banff is a globally recognised destination and faces all the pressures and challenges that come with such a distinction without being able to expand physically because of the pristine natural environment that it resides in. This creates well-known housing pressures, which in turn create pressures on the built heritage of the Town.
It’s also a UNESCO World Heritage Site that operates under the jurisdiction of Parks Canada, which means that the cultural and aesthetic qualities of the built form within the Town are of utmost importance and must be protected at all costs.
These intensive and often competing pressures have moved the Town to reconsider how it manages its heritage properties and to look for ways to improve their preservation and motivate owners to designate and maintain stewardship over the pieces of history they live inside of.
In this report we will go through the steps we took to help provide insight into the Heritage Resource Action Plan (HRAP) tactics the town had previously identified to help bring them to life and offer meaningful implementation solutions in the form of policy.”
I really enjoyed getting to dig in to the history of these places as well as getting to hear directly from the owners today about the challenges they face in trying to keep up with the history they find themselves in charge of stewarding. This was a fairly hands-on project. Hopefully, the bylaw amendments can help them make the best of their properties for everyone who goes through Banff.
Admittedly, this report is a bit loud, I was excited about it.