A few months ago, The Journal sat down with Mayor Malcolm Eaton, where he mentioned a growth planning study, which the City of Humboldt had been quietly conducting for the past little while.
The City hired planningAlliance, an urban planning agency, and Catterall & Wright, consulting engineers, to oversee the study and construct a plan for the future of Humboldt in terms of growth.
"If we're going to grow to the north, what does that mean? If we grow to the south, what does that mean?" Eaton said at the time.
The objective is to determine what area(s) Humboldt will be growing toward in the next 20 or so years, and how that will affect infrastructure, housing and the like.
The conclusions that planningAlliance and Catterall & Wright come up with will help structure a "high-level document," Peter Bergquist, director of planning and engineering for the city, said.
"We're trying to determine what is realistic growth for Humboldt," Bergquist said. "What are the implications of our growth in the next 10-25 years; how will things like storm sewers and water supply be affected."
The agency planningAlliance will be analyzing Humboldt's land and its function, while Catterall & Wright will be delving deeper, determining the land's feasibility for service and what specifically can exist there.
Using growth projections, the two consulting firms will work with the City of Humboldt corporation to conclude where the city is best able to grow, "given the opportunities and constraints that currently exist", it said in a recent media release.
Other factors taken into consideration are environmental issues, transportation, servicing and land use information, the release added.
The City hosted an open house during the Humboldt Broncos hockey game Tuesday night, in order to receive feedback from the public on the growth study.
Although residents of Humboldt will have little to no impact in terms of where Humboldt grows, Bergquist said the purpose of the open house was to remain "transparent" to the public and keep them well-informed on the study and where the current growth trends are heading.
"We wanted to show them the most realistic options," he said. "We don't want to surprise our citizens. Instead, we want to take them with us through the planning process and show what we're thinking," Bergquist said.
The main catalyst that will steer the direction of Humboldt's growth is economics.
"This will mostly happen on its own," Bergquist said. "It'll be the market conditions that drive this," although he did add that there are naturally some areas of the city that are more cost-effective to service than others.
Eaton added in our interview from December that there's a certain control mechanism that comes with that factor.
"We won't subsidize certain projects from developers, for instance," he said, noting there are some vicinities in Humboldt that the City would be hesitant to build toward.
But in the end, as Bergquist said, it'll be the province's housing market that really establishes what Humboldt's layout will look like years from now.
"This information [from planningAlliance and Catterall & Wright] is geared toward developers, builders and landowners," Bergquist said. "It'll figure out a whole variety of things, like the trend for density. We've looked at cities and we already know that having large lots is more expensive to build and maintain. Those are the kinds of things this study is going to evaluate."
Calling the analysis "a great process", Bergquist thinks the information collected from the two planning firms will help the City of Humboldt "guide residential, commercial and industrial development."
