The City of Airdrie is putting in the effort to revitalize its downtown core with a new policy.
Airdrie council rescinded seven previously adopted downtown incentives resolutions at its April 2 meeting, and replaced them with the official "Downtown Incentives Policy." The new policy is meant to incentivize businesses to help revitalize Airdrie’s downtown through various funding streams they can apply to.
“It is the city and council essentially providing public investment into motivating others to help us revitalize our downtown as we don’t own all of the property and buildings within the downtown, so it’s outside of our control,” said Adena Malyk, Airdrie’s downtown revitalization coordinator.
Funding streams include a parking structure subsidy, a façade improvement grant, a beautification grant, a patio grant, an activation and collaboration grant, a downtown business organization support fund, an environmental site assessment (ESA) grant, and an expedited development permit (DP) review.
Alongside that policy, council approved an operating budget adjustment of $1 million from the Downtown Incentives Reserve to fund the program.
Mayor Peter Brown and Coun. Darrell Belyk, who both expressed concerns about the program being vague, opposed the adoption of the new policy and the transfer of $1 million.
Brown felt the policy left too much open to interpretation.
“I hate discretion because you have five people looking at the same thing and the discretion changes,” he said.
With a limited amount of funds, he said not every business will have their funding approved.
Malyk said all the incentives are on a first come, first serve basis.
“We’re giving the community roughly two weeks to read through and understand all the information and make contact with us,” she said. “Applications open up the first of May.”
Airdrie’s administration will immediately begin marketing the incentives program, according to Malyk. Information on the program will be publicly available by April 15 on the City’s website and applications for the program will open on May 1.
Brown said the $2 million approved for the revitalization fund in 2022, which he didn’t vote for, did not have access criteria. Malyk said the new policy includes all the eligibility criteria and evaluation.
She added that $175,000 from the initial $2 million approved in 2022 was used to hire consultants to build the program framework, as well as run environmental projects' and incentive pilot programs
Remaining in the reserve is $1.825 million and in order to execute the program and not return with each application, from which administration asked for a transfer of $1 million into the operating budget to fund applications.
Administration anticipates an over-subscription to a few of the available streams. Specifically, the façade improvement, beautification, and patio grants have garnered the most interest from existing downtown businesses and property owners.
Community Engagement
Coun. Tina Petrow asked how these incentives get the City into the direction of the revitalized downtown concept created through community engagement.
“There will be some public stakeholder engagement happening this year to start discussing what that could look like, how long of a timeframe it will be, what the community wants to see, what the community will support,” Malyk said.
“These incentives are meant to meet the outcomes of overall revitalization, so façade improvements could mean new awnings and canopies and signage. Beautification could mean more murals, more flowers, more seating, more benches. Patios would liven the space and we could hopefully look to see businesses extending their hours in the evening during the spring and summer months so things become more lively. Having more events and programming in the downtown (sic) will draw people more into our downtown. All of those things are overarchingly going to get us to the big umbrella of revitalization.”
The parking structure subsidy, ESA grant, and the expedited DP review are available to properties in the wider community revitalization levy boundary in order to accelerate development.
The other five grants are applicable to businesses within the downtown boundary.
All streams are reimbursement based but need to be applied for prior to the work being completed in order to qualify for funding.
Two streams under the original seven adopted in 2022 were the mixed use and housing refund policy and the main street supports. Malyk explained they weren’t meeting the intent of being an incentive as Airdrie has improved affordability of development throughout all of Airdrie.
The City will post the details about the program on their website on April 15, or to learn more watch the council live stream at Airdrie.ca.
