Possible future for secondary suites in Inglewood

Calgary city councillors are hopeful that secondary suites will finally be allowed in Inglewood, after they found a forgotten provincial regulation banning them.

Ward 9 Councillor Gian-Carlo Carra, who lives in the southeast community, said he was surprised when it was discovered.

“I had no idea that there was this 1970’s restriction, this provincial noise bylaw called the AVPA, and it was just based on the idea that A: at the time, jets were extremely loud [and] B: the building code was pretty weak, every window was a single pane of glass, and the idea of anybody living in a hell-hole like Inglewood was socially undesirable,” Carra said.

There are concerns about increasing population under a flight path, and Carra added complaints will still go to the airport about noise, but he hopes advanced construction and quieter aircraft will lessen them.

Also, as he believes it was also put in place to target residents in the once downtrodden area, Carra said secondary suites in the revitalized Inglewood would be a benefit.

They do have support from the airport authority, and Carra hopes the province will remove that regulation, largely because times have changed.

“We have to balance minimizing annoyed phones calls to the airport with the idea that we need to grow a vibrant, urban city so that there will be actual customers for that airport. And places where we’re investing massive amounts of money in transit infrastructure, like Inglewood, are places where we want to see the appropriate amounts of density,” he said.

Council will debate the issue later in December, and Carra will recuse himself as he lives in Inglewood.

Council voted on Wednesday to ask the province to remove the regulation.