Rob Murray: I’m speaking with Chris Ollenberger from Three Sisters Mountain Village. The draft ASPs, or Area Structure Plans, have been released for the Three Sisters Village area and Smith Creek. For those who aren’t familiar, what exactly is an Area Structure Plan?

Chris Ollenberger: An Area Structure Plan sets out the big picture for what will occur on the land – here will be residential, here will be commercial, here will be hotels, here will be park space, here will be natural space. They set out the guidelines under which you would move forward to do more detailed applications like land uses and subdivisions.

RM: How would you summarize Three Sisters’ overall vision for those two areas?

CO: Three Sisters has been pivoting for some time to make sure that what we’re building is relevant to what the locals want to see, what is marketable, and what will be sustainable and resilient in the future for the Town of Canmore. It’s still very much based on health and wellness as a focus, the recreational activities are a big part of the Three Sisters Village, and making sure that we have enough rooftops, tourism trade, and things like that to support the kind of commercial activities the Town of Canmore is looking for so they can expand their commercial tax base and the offerings available to residents.

RM: There will be some commercial areas mixed in with the residential?

CO: Absolutely. We’re looking at probably three bigger plots of commercial areas. Within the Resort Village itself there’s a resort core. That would be where you find the hotels. That would be where you find a walkable street with the restaurants, shops, and good things like that. Then, towards the Dead Man’s Flats end of the Smith Creek Area Structure Plan, we’re looking to have a bit more of a light industrial or flex space. There’s a demand for those kinds of spaces, so we’ve accommodated some of those needs along with local retailers within the Smith Creek Area Structure Plan. I should add that right by the 4-way stop that’s off the Three Sisters interchange and Highway 1, we’re actually in some detailed planning and design phases right now for another commercial part where you’d find a grocery store, gas station, clothing stores, coffee shops, educational facilities, and residential mixed in. So there’s a lot going on at Three Sisters.

RM: This isn’t really in the near future though when this all would be completed, is it?

CO: No, not when it would be completed. The Area Structure Plans set out a framework for about a 20 to 30 year horizon, and they allow for flexibility such that you can adjust land uses, or you can tweak bits and pieces of the vision to keep up with the current market, but we believe the big picture of the framework will be resilient for decades to come.

RM: You can’t talk about Three Sisters area without talking about the wildlife corridor. The province has now set that wildlife corridor so this whole process can proceed. What do you see as Three Sisters’ role in preserving the integrity of that corridor, and how you ensure wildlife movement still works with all the new development coming in?

CO: We’ve been very careful to make sure that we’re respectful of the wildlife corridors and to give them the space they need. The Environmental Impact Statement, which you can find on the Three Sisters website – there’s over 400 pages and it outlines many different mitigations to make sure that as we put development within the development area it doesn’t impede upon the wildlife use of the wildlife area. One of the biggest differences from past approaches is instead of having what was called a soft edge, it’s more of a hard edge, and this is keeping up with the latest in wildlife corridor science. What we’re looking for now is to identify very specific spaces – this is where the wildlife corridor is, and this is where human recreation should generally not occur. We would have identified, approved trails, but there would be much less proliferation of the random trails or so-called pirate trails interspersed within the corridor. In the human use management report from a couple of years back, one of the biggest obstacles to effective use of the wildlife corridor was actually humans and their unleashed dogs and biking. We need to provide those spaces where people can do those recreation activities but still give wildlife the space they need.

RM: Does this include fencing?

CO: Yes, it does include fencing, mostly to help identify to humans that this is the space where wildlife are supposed to be. There will be signage and there will be gates. Right now, frankly, if you go out there and you don’t really know the map of the wildlife corridor and you haven’t been trained in survey markings or GPS use, there really is no indication in a lot of these spaces and that’s part of the problem. The fencing is to keep wildlife out of developed areas and to keep the humans out of the wildlife spaces.

RM: I understand you have some open houses coming up as well?

CO: It’s a virtual open house. We’re presenting a couple of opportunities where there’s an overview of the ASPs and then some technical areas such as environment, transportation, those types of things, where the specialists are available for people to ask questions.

RM: When are those open houses taking place?

CO: We’re offering two, three hour information sessions. You don’t have to commit to the entire session. You can join for the first hour, which is the overall framework, and stay for the whole thing or come back just for the topics that interest you. There’s the ability to sign up on our website. They are Thursday, October 1st from 6 – 9 PM, and also Friday, October 2nd from 10 AM to 1 PM.

RM: Is there still an opportunity for people to provide feedback? How would that feedback be incorporated?

CO: This is absolutely the time to provide feedback, and it’s not the only opportunity to provide feedback. Eventually there’ll be a public hearing with council, but this is a great time to provide authentic, thoughtful feedback of any kind, because this will help shape our Area Structure Plans for the final submission to the Town of Canmore. The drafts that we put out there now are 90 – 95% final and we think we have most of the pieces right. We wanted to put it out to the Canmore public so that they could review them with the supporting studies. Anyone with input can offer it at those feedback sessions we just talked about. They can also offer it through a feedback form on our website, and you will be able to get all to get all that feedback put in. We might not be able to accommodate all of it, but we’ll always have a good reason of what we can do, how we incorporated it, and where you can find it.

Filed under: Canmore, Three Sisters Mountain Village