UNB woodlot slow to develop, so Fredericton turns sights elsewhere for new neighbourhood

The lack of residential development in one of Fredericton's four designated growth areas has the city looking at designating land elsewhere as a future neighbourhood.

In the seven years since the city adopted its growth strategy, 4,100 new housing units have been built.

None of those have been on land owned by the University of New Brunswick, despite its being earmarked in 2017 as one of four areas for new residential development.

That's now prompting the city to consider allowing development on lands around Doak Road, with council directing city staff Monday night to come up with a plan for how to do so.

"Nothing has happened on those [UNB] lands, and it's put an awful lot of development pressure on the other nodes that were identified under the growth strategy," said Coun. Jason Lejeune, chair of the city's economic vitality committee.

"So we really want to have staff examine the Doak Road area to see if it's a feasible option to alleviate some of the pressure in the other growth nodes."

Fredericton's 2017 growth strategy laid out a plan to encourage density in the downtown and allow new developments on the city's outskirts that would accommodate the addition of 32,000 new residents.

That plan imagined 8,000 new residents living downtown, and 24,000 new residents living in four new residential neighbourhoods.

Those new neighbourhoods included one in the Brookside Drive-Ring Road area and another to the east of Cliffe Street, both on the north side of the city.

The others were on the south side in the Bishop Drive-Hanwell Road area, and along the north and south sides of Knowledge Park Drive, on lands known as the UNB woodlot.

Fredericton planning director Ken Forrest said the city has seen residential growth in the three of these areas and none at all on the UNB land.

"Our challenge is we're dealing with a tremendous amount of growth and on the south side of the [St. John] river, we only have one kind of new neighbourhood functioning to accommodate that growth," Forrest said.

"So it just, it gets to a point where, you know, how much longer can we wait for that [UNB woodlot area] to light up, or do we look at another option?"

A staff report about a potential Doak Road neighbourhood in the city's southeast describes the area as central and close to the uptown commercial area, industrial park and Grant-Harvey Centre.