Western portion of Moncton’s Vision Lands pushing forward

Situated in Moncton’s north end is a very large area of dense trees and unused space. It’s been dubbed Vision Lands, and it’s been a topic of conversation for two decades now.

However, with Moncton claiming the title as one of the fastest growing communities in the country for the last two years, Long Range Policy Planning Team Manager with the city, Josh Davies, says the time for development is now.

“The Vision Lands would be one part of the wider strategy, but certainly one that is going to be able to accommodate substantial amount of residential commercial development over the next 25 years,” said Davies.

“We’re working towards a plan specifically in this instance towards the western portion of Vision Lands to come up with zoning, traffic, transportation network, active transportation and a regional park to ultimately create a new community within the city of Moncton.”

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The Vision Lands is about 1,400 acres between Wheeler Boulevard, The Trans Canada Highway, Mapleton Road, Mortan Avenue and McLaughlin Drive.

Davies says the current focus is just on the western portion of the area, which accounts for 650 acres of the total 1,400.

“We’re doing a master plan with the whole idea of going to our council to ask them to refer a change of re-zoning to lay out street networks to really provide the roadmap for the development of this area,” he said.

The whole idea is to create a new community within Greater Moncton where people can work, live and play all while addressing a growing need in the city.

“Unfortunately we are experiencing a housing crisis, so our vacancy rate is 1.2 per cent, which is very low,” said Greater Moncton Chamber of Commerce interim CEO, Xavier Infantas.

“Having this project on hand will somehow ease that crisis, giving opportunity for not only residents of Greater Moncton, but also for newcomers to settle and have a place”

Infantas says the chamber is very supportive of this development project and hopes the work is able to start soon.

“I think that this will be an impactful project. This will become one of the great examples of how a model of residential and commercial can merge together and also protecting, at the same time, the nature habitat,” he said.

“If there is opportunities for businesses to settle in these areas, that will be an excellent opportunity. Not only for existing businesses in the Greater Moncton area, but also for new businesses that would like to move and explore the possibility to live here.”

Recently, the City of Moncton conducted a survey to get community feedback on what they’d like to see the land developed into.

Updated information, including what the survey found and the latest plans, have been added to the letschatmoncton.ca page.

According to the website, the emerging theme was for Vision Lands to “provide a unique and complete neighbourhood living experience that prioritizes environmental and recreational infrastructure with a market-responsive housing model that supports inclusive and equitable living.”

Davies says “we’re looking at potentially up to 42,000 residents that could be living in the Vision Lands which would reflect approximately 18,000 housing units consisting of ground oriented housing which would be sort of your singles, twos, townhouses, row houses, all the way up to multi-unit apartments and bigger almost tower type structures.”

However, he says a number of things have to happen first before shovels can be put into the ground including:

• consolidating the western portion into the wider Vision Lands plan
• work with landowners and the public
• ask council to bring forward a re-zoning application
• confirm a cost-sharing agreement

He adds that the hope is to see financial support from both the provincial and federal government and that shovels will be in the ground in the next three-to-five years.

“This plan, and if successful, will be really the tool that will enable for the rubber to hit the road and really get those shovels in the ground because the zoning will change, we’ll have the rule book,” said Davies.

“We’ll have the play book in front of us to really enable this development to happen and this from an administrative standpoint was the really big key piece to getting the rest of these areas to develop.”

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