The City of Yellowknife could make changes to its community plan, in light of promised new investments in northern defence and infrastructure projects.

“We’re going to have to adjust very quickly about how we change our city,” deputy mayor Rob Warburton said. “The demand for housing is going to be exponential.”

Work to update the city’s official community plan, which acts as a roadmap for development priorities, has been underway since last spring. As part of that work, residents were asked to envision what they want Yellowknife to look like in 2050.

A first draft of the new community plan is expected to be presented to city council next month.

City officials say the plan will reflect the new realities of promised defence investments — though not everybody is confident it will capture the full picture accurately.

‘I’m concerned … with where they’re all going to stay’

Prime Minister Mark Carney announced a $35-billion investment plan for the North during a visit to Yellowknife earlier this month, including substantial North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) program funding for Yellowknife. 

Warburton said he expects an influx of workers in the city to build everything that will come from defence investments.

However, the city’s ongoing housing shortage means it’s not clear where those workers would live.  

He said that Yellowknife does not have hundreds of workers ready to take on major water and sewer infrastructure construction projects, so that will likely mean bringing some workers in from elsewhere.  

“I’m concerned too, obviously, with where they’re all going to stay,” he said. 

Warburton said that means there could be some discussion about work camps, in the new community plan.  

However, local realtor Adrian Bell says the city also needs to look beyond temporary housing for visiting workers, as some of them may decide they want to settle in Yellowknife. That means opening more land in the city for housing development, he said.

“We’ve now pretty much run out of the existing land within town that was available,” he said.

Hopes for the new community plan

Bell, owner of Century 21 Prospect Realty, said he wants to make sure the new community plan shifts how the city approaches new development. He argues that the current land shortage can be traced back, in part, to the previous community plan, adopted in 2020, which he said prioritized densification over opening up new areas for development. 

He acknowledged the updated plan will likely attempt to address the land shortage, but he’s skeptical.

“My biggest fear is that it will be insufficient, it will be unambitious or not ambitious enough,” he said.

The Yellowknife Chamber of Commerce has voiced similar concerns. The organization has asked its members in a letter to sign a petition about the new community plan. 

The letter, first reported by Cabin Radio, claims Yellowknife has frequently had periods when land was “sold out” over the past 15 years, and says that has contributed to the housing shortage and the difficulties some local employers have in retaining staff.

The chamber wants the city to maintain a multi-year land inventory, set clear housing targets, and balance growth between new construction on undeveloped land and infill development on vacant or underutilized land. 

New plan expected by this summer

Yellowknife’s community plan is intended to be reviewed every eight years, but this time, the process started early.

“I can’t imagine where we would be had we not started the community plan process,” said city manager Stephen Van Dine.

He said he is confident the priorities and themes captured through community engagement so far, like the need for housing, are still relevant even in light of promised new investments in the territory.

However, he said the city may have to revisit some work done to estimate what population growth will look like over the years.

Van Dine said Carney’s announcement earlier this month came at a “fairly perfect time” as far as the community plan update goes, because there is still time to hear from the public and adapt the plan before it’s approved.  Van Dine said he still expects that will be done by this summer.

“We’re committed to the plan to get it done under the life of this council,” he said. The next municipal election is this fall. 

Van Dine said there will be more opportunities for the public to provide input before the new plan gets to the approval stage.