Cambrian Crossing | ?m | ?s

CplKlinger

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I saw a billboard for this while driving by the site the other day. It looks like Sherwood Park is expanding towards the Bremner development, and Cambrian Crossing will serve as a transition between the two. It looks like a suburban sprawl-style community which is typical of Sherwood Park, and it will eventually be home to upwards of 11,000 people. The site which is advertised on the billboard is just a small section of it. You can see info about the site for sale, and a sales brochure that gives a lot of good details about the broader community being planned, here.

Here is the current sales brochure, which includes a detailed map of the planned community (I couldn't get the PDF to attach to this post).
 

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It is interesting to see how TWP 534 will be completely reconstructed on a new route. Be a nice community if you worked in the Aurum industrial.
 
I got my screenshot tool to work; here's one of the maps from the brochure. Note that there's relatively few spots marked for medium density development, and there's only one spot earmarked for mixed-use developments :/
screenshot-www.royalparkrealty.com-2021.04.28-17_30_00.png
 
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It's all inevitable. Just have to hope the developments are done right when they're pushed forward. In 30 years, Fort Sask & Sherwood Park will probably be nearly kissing each other, and I know big developers have been buying a ton of land out in the Horse Hills area.
 
I happened to be driving on 21 today, and noticed that construction has begun. The Area Structure Plan was approved in May, and an agreement was reached with the developers in June after hitting some speed bumps shortly after this page was created. The first project is Hearthstone at Cambrian Crossing, by Mattamy Homes. I have found absolutely no hints about whether it is single family housing or multi-unit/mixed residential, but I wager that they're going with the former to start things off. The staging area for their equipment is outside the zone for stage one, so I can't tell as of yet where exactly the construction will be. Aside from my pictures, I am attaching a couple of maps from the ASP. The red circle in the first one was added by me to show approximately where I took the pictures. The ASP has a ton of information, and many other maps, so I highly recommend that you take a look if you're interested in learning more.

One interesting dynamic which I didn't think about is the Edmonton Metropolitan Regional Board's densification requirements. As noted in the April article I linked (4th link in this comment), this is different from any neighbourhood which will developed in Sherwood Park as of yet, because they have never been forced to build this densely before. And notice how despite that, 70ish% of the planned development is light green, which represents low density housing. This is exactly why they think they need an entire new community (Bremner); nobody there has the vision or drive to shoot for more than the minimum when it comes to density. Developers prefer suburban-style development, and the politicians don't want to try anything revolutionary. I mean, they have how many strip mall developments along Baseline and Wye roads? And yet they need to expand into Cambrian Crossing *and* Bremner because Sherwood Park proper is full? Nope. I'm not buying that.

If Edmonton can manage to set a target of half its growth occuring within already-developed areas of the city, so can Sherwood Park. Even Fort Saskatchewan set a goal in its new MDP of going from 28,000 residents to 40,000 residents through densification and finishing developments that are already underway. And we're talking about a city whose transit service consists of two colour coded bus routes! Anyways, thanks for reading this rant.
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Cambrian Crossing Map 1.PNG
 
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Between Bremner and Cambrian there has been significant investments made by Rohit, Mattamy and Qualico's Joint Venture (includes a number of prominent housing and development companies) this is needed for Sherwood Park as there is no developable land remaining in the city. While many here cry about why it is being developed, there is a reason that there is nearly 2000 acres and $200M worth of raw land investment made here.
 
there is no developable land remaining in the city.
I strongly disagree with that argument; Sherwood Park has ample developable land if they would simply open their minds. There are two major freeways that cut through Sherwood Park: Baseline Road and Sherwood Park Freeway. Each have block upon block upon block of parking lots, strip malls, and big box stores - including a Rona that's been closed for years now. Each freeway is close to a major transit centre - Bethel and Ordze. With their open spaces and proximity to amenities, transit, and freeways, these commercial strips are ideal places for massive investments in multi-unit and mixed-use housing projects.

What developers need to succeed here is support from Stracthonca County's council. Instead, their Municipal Development Plan states this vision for the built up areas (emphasis mine): "recognition of the primarily low density residential character of this area, but work towards diversifying the range of residential forms through the adoption of Area Redevelopment Plans." We should see a desire for more developments like the excellent Centre in the Park, and an ambition to follow the path of Edmonton and Fort Saskatchewan(!) in achieving a majority of its growth (or even a plurality) by densifying these existing areas. Instead, Strathcona County is going the opposite path of nearby municipalities by aiming to achieve most of its growth through greenfield developments that meet only the minimum density requirements mandated by the Edmonton Metropolitan Region Board (which can be seen here on page 59), and leaving Sherwood Park largely as-is.
 
I strongly disagree with that argument; Sherwood Park has ample developable land if they would simply open their minds. There are two major freeways that cut through Sherwood Park: Baseline Road and Sherwood Park Freeway. Each have block upon block upon block of parking lots, strip malls, and big box stores - including a Rona that's been closed for years now. Each freeway is close to a major transit centre - Bethel and Ordze. With their open spaces and proximity to amenities, transit, and freeways, these commercial strips are ideal places for massive investments in multi-unit and mixed-use housing projects.

What developers need to succeed here is support from Stracthonca County's council. Instead, their Municipal Development Plan states this vision for the built up areas (emphasis mine): "recognition of the primarily low density residential character of this area, but work towards diversifying the range of residential forms through the adoption of Area Redevelopment Plans." We should see a desire for more developments like the excellent Centre in the Park, and an ambition to follow the path of Edmonton and Fort Saskatchewan(!) in achieving a majority of its growth (or even a plurality) by densifying these existing areas. Instead, Strathcona County is going the opposite path of nearby municipalities by aiming to achieve most of its growth through greenfield developments that meet only the minimum density requirements mandated by the Edmonton Metropolitan Region Board, and leaving Sherwood Park largely as-is.
The issue is that despite attempting to social engineer people living in condos in Sherwood Park that is not what the overall market demands. These developments will meet EMRB's required 40 units per developable hectare - which is quite dense, take a drive through Secord to see how dense it actually is.
 
I strongly disagree with that argument; Sherwood Park has ample developable land if they would simply open their minds. There are two major freeways that cut through Sherwood Park: Baseline Road and Sherwood Park Freeway. Each have block upon block upon block of parking lots, strip malls, and big box stores - including a Rona that's been closed for years now. Each freeway is close to a major transit centre - Bethel and Ordze. With their open spaces and proximity to amenities, transit, and freeways, these commercial strips are ideal places for massive investments in multi-unit and mixed-use housing projects.

What developers need to succeed here is support from Stracthonca County's council. Instead, their Municipal Development Plan states this vision for the built up areas (emphasis mine): "recognition of the primarily low density residential character of this area, but work towards diversifying the range of residential forms through the adoption of Area Redevelopment Plans." We should see a desire for more developments like the excellent Centre in the Park, and an ambition to follow the path of Edmonton and Fort Saskatchewan(!) in achieving a majority of its growth (or even a plurality) by densifying these existing areas. Instead, Strathcona County is going the opposite path of nearby municipalities by aiming to achieve most of its growth through greenfield developments that meet only the minimum density requirements mandated by the Edmonton Metropolitan Region Board (which can be seen here on page 59), and leaving Sherwood Park largely as-is.
The issue is that despite attempting to social engineer people living in condos in Sherwood Park that is not what the overall market demands. These developments will meet EMRB's required 40 units per developable hectare - which is quite dense, take a drive through Secord to see how dense it actually is.

Putting the densification of the already existing area aside, my main concern with building huge new areas like this comes more from a transportation access view. These areas might technically be denser than many older neighborhoods in the city, but what kind of transportation connections do residents, workers and visitors of these areas have at their disposal? Will the there be convenient nodes of denser mixed-uses built around transit centers and linkages to the surrounding municipalities? Will there be adequate cycling and walking infrastructure that isn't frequently impeded or even dangerous?

Probably not. Unless local governments and developers are truly willing to take a risk (which those things I mentioned above unfortunately are here) then we'll end up with another 95% car-centric, spread out and unnavigable area which further burdens Edmonton with higher maintenance costs for a lower amount of revenue gained back. Makes perfect sense really!
 
The issue is that despite attempting to social engineer people living in condos in Sherwood Park that is not what the overall market demands. These developments will meet EMRB's required 40 units per developable hectare - which is quite dense, take a drive through Secord to see how dense it actually is.
Edmonton actually sucks at density because we are significantly dense in some areas....and it makes no sense haha. I guess its better than more single family sprawl, but all the 5 story apartments by the henday, the condos and even really dense townhomes in secord, windemere, etc...they don't help create sustainability.

But they are better than low, low density. And in the future, windemere for example could easily have better transit connections or redevelopment of its shopping center in 30 years with an LRT line.

We just need density and development in all the dead land within our city. Even Oliver could be 5x the density easily. Stony and 156th. Blatch, exhibition, all the malls with LRT stops. Gentle density in most mature areas. Downtown and strathcona can build up a lot more.

There is tons of space to build within the henday. No need for Greenfield.
 

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