There are still some major phases of development to go before Three Sisters is fully built out.  As part of the original development decisions in the 90s a resort core area, a planned hub for tourists and locals featuring both commercial and residential units, has always been part of the plan but up to this point hasn’t been built.  With Three Sisters Mountain Village out of receivership the team is now ready to get the ball rolling on making it happen.  The developer is eyeing the unfinished Three Sisters Golf Course as a location for the Resort Centre.  As it wasn’t part of the original plan for this specific area of land the developer needs an amendment to the Area Structure Plan (ASP), a broad concept document detailing possible uses and densities for development.  Those documents have been submitted to the Town of Canmore and are available to read here.

Here’s the first paragraph of the ASP Amendment document which details the broad concept:

The Resort Centre will be the heart of the Three Sisters Mountain Village (TSMV) area, where visitors and residents of Canmore will come to rejuvenate, recreate, exercise, heal, be entertained, learn, meet and live. The Resort Centre is envisioned as a model of a health, wellness, fitness and nature-based resort within the Canadian Rockies. The focus of the Resort Centre is a state-of-the-art health, wellness and lifestyle facility and related tourism and accommodation uses centred around the idea that the Resort Centre will become the base camp for all the recreational activity offerings in the area. Additionally, within the Plan area, the resort will offer walking, biking, and hiking trails, including specialized mountain bike trails that will attract a growing number of visitors to Canmore.

As Tanya and I discussed this week, decisions made decades ago mean the community doesn’t have a say as to whether we should build or not build.  We do, however, get to have a voice in the ‘how’, and the developer has been doing a fair bit of outreach and engagement to ensure the community is an integral part of the process and kept informed along the way.  They reached out to me to request some interview opportunities and, knowing how important it is to keep everyone in the loop about something that will impact Canmore in a big way into the future, I was happy to host them.  Those conversations are posted below.

Jessica Karpat from QuantumPlace discusses the overall concept for the area.

 

Dr. Kyle Knopf is a wildlife biologist with the consulting firm Golder Associates.  He discusses wildlife and environmental impacts of the proposed development, why they’re now proposing a ‘hard edge’ (wildlife fencing) for the area, and the integrity of the wildlife corridor.

 

Anytime you talk development in Three Sisters it goes hand-in-hand with undermining.  Chris Ollenberger talks about the steps they would take to build safely on top of the old mine workings in the area.

 

The Town of Canmore has asked the developer to resubmit this alongside the ASP for Smith Creek, the final unfinished areas of Three Sisters stretching to Dead Man’s Flats.  Keep listening for details on future public hearings.

Filed under: Canmore, Resort Centre, Three Sisters Mountain Village