ROB: An Instagram post recently piqued both of our interests. This is an exclusive offering of only 22 homesites along the Bow River at Kananaskis Ranch, situated near Brewster’s Golf Course. I did not realize that there was a residential home development for that area coming down the pipe.

TANYA: I don’t think many people realized that there was either. This is, from my understanding, a partnership between a local developer and the Kananaskis Ranch Golf Course and Equestrian Centre. You often see these kinds of partnerships pop up where someone has the land, someone has the know-how, you get together and you build some houses.

ROB: What I find interesting about this one is that normally with a home development proposal or idea like this, it would be in front of some sort of municipal body or there would be some sort of public engagement process around this. I really haven’t heard a peep about that sort of thing at this point in time.

TANYA: I think there’s a lot of ways that those interested in moving forward with a commercial venture can go about assessing interest and viability. There’s going to be a sales launch on July 28th. That’s an opportunity for people to secure an option to buy one of these lots. Now, that language tells me that there’s still a lot of work to do in terms of being able to actually sell them. This is just the first we’re hearing about it. We should be expect to hear more from them and the development authority in the future.

ROB: When I first heard about this, I didn’t realize it was on the ranch site. I thought it was maybe a proposal to redevelop the Seebe area. It’s not, but it got me thinking about Seebe. I mean, we essentially have a little village site there that’s roughed in for utilities already. I wonder if anyone’s ever going to try to put forward an idea to redevelop Seebe.

TANYA: This has actually been on the table since 2007. The Seebe lands, when TransAlta removed themselves from there, reverted to ownership by a corporation owned by the Stoney Nakoda First Nation. They put forward an Area Structure Plan in 2007 for those lands to the MD of Bighorn, calling them the Horseshoe Lands. This Area Structure Plan was literally about creating an entire new community where Seebe is. That entire area, the 1X highway, there are a lot of industrial uses. We have the old Seebe site. We have the Brewster Ranch, and the Wildland Park amenities in there as well. It would be wrong of us to assume that that area is not potential for future development, and we should definitely be engaged in these discussions because there’s some really big ones that could come down the pipe again.

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