CALGARY — Developers and major retail chains are giving a rough reception to city proposals for new shopping centre design standards.

City planners have tested out proposed rules that would appear to make future Calgary big-box complexes look vastly different from the normal suburban style, with less space for parking lots, more for pedestrians and more attractive streetscapes.

In the wake of Calgary Planning Commission last week ignoring city officials’ opposition to an east Calgary shopping complex said to be too “auto-oriented,” Mayor Naheed Nenshi said on the weekend the city needs to stop allowing such supercentres.

However, a new report on business feedback to the potential changes shows reaction is ranging from skeptical and concerned to incredulous, according to a document obtained by the Herald.

Some of the bluntest criticism from the “testing session” was aimed at a proposal that 80 per cent of any new complex’s parking be underground or in a parkade, rather than in the surface lots that dominate developments like WestHills and Deerfoot Meadows.

The newly approved East Hills project at 17th Avenue and 84th Street S.E. will rely on surface parking.

“In urban settings, maybe. In suburban, forget it. Is the city paying?” said one respondent.

A second called the city’s idea “ridiculous,” another “quite funny.”

“Are YOU paying for it?????? Crazy,” said yet another respondent.

The focus group included major commercial developers, as well as officials from major big-box chains like Canadian Tire and Walmart. The responses were all anonymous.

The “stakeholders” were asked last month to grade each idea the city offered on a scale of 1 to 5, five being the highest. The 80 per cent parking rule ranked at 1.3.

Another, which states that retail centres must have their front facades on the street — as opposed to within a facility’s parking lot — was graded 1.6.

It’s unrealistic in suburbia, one business respondent said.

“We’ve heard how shoppers, who are all women, want to park in front of the store as close to the main entrance as possible,” the person said.

“If there’s no parking available, they may just keep right on driving.”

Rollin Stanley, the city’s planning general manager, has begun making his mark on Calgary designers and developers alike with PowerPoint presentations on “smart growth” big box developments throughout North America. He opposed the East Hills design, which features the back of a Walmart facing 17th Avenue S.E.

Nenshi expressed his own disappointment with the planning commission’s 5-4 vote for the big box project.

He told the Canadian Urbanism National Summit on the weekend that he agrees with the development’s supporters that consumers want to have Walmarts nearby.

“However, does the Walmart have to look like that?” he said, pointing to an image on the screen.

“Do we have to have a Walmart that looks like that have to turn into what’s supposed to be a pedestrian street? Do we have to have acres and acres of surface parking making it impossible to traverse the stores on foot?”