Article content continued

It also needs to review the rules, officials say. Last year, 88 per cent of developers trying to build these middle-density homes had to go through the time-consuming process of getting a variance.

Two blocks from Knack’s skinny homes, developer Baidar Rana with Parklane Developments is building 10 units of row housing on what was two 50-foot lots across from Jasper Place Library.

Elise Stolte

This summer, he listed the first ones for $350,000. That’s for a small two- or three-bedroom, street-level unit with no or minimal yard. It has air conditioning, hardwood floors, stainless steel appliances and a finished garage.

Getting permits “was a nightmare, to be honest. Coun. Knack helped a lot,” said Rana. The site will be close to LRT. It will definitely change what neighbours see, but also give eight more families a chance to live centrally at street level.

Photo by City of Edmonton

The city research is heading to council’s urban planning committee Wednesday. It’s an interim update with officials aiming to release an action plan in early 2018.

Knack’s decision to build skinny homes was idealistic and experimental. “This was meant to add value to the community, bring more people in,” he said.

He tore down a dilapidated home, subdivided and built new partly just to live the developer experience, sharing financial data with the community league.

It’s convinced him higher density is needed. The city needs to rezone swaths of land along transit corridors to remove barriers to development, he said. It also needs to let people build garage and secondary suites more easily, including on smaller lots.

City officials offer 37 solutions from other cities used to encourage redevelopment, including new kinds of zoning codes that ignore how many units are in a building as long as it’s a certain size.

They’re looking at tax code changes that charge based on the lot size more than the building on it.