Daycare’s will be able to be built in the highway commercial district with new amendment

The Town of Sylvan Lake passed and amendment to the Land Use Bylaw (LUB) to allow for the discretionary use of a daycare within the Highway Commercial district, during the council meeting on March 27.

LUB defines a daycare to be a facility that provides care and supervision for seven or more children for more than three consecutive hours in each day the facility operates.

Prior to passing the bylaw, daycare facilities were listed for discretionary use in all districts with the exceptions of the Marina Bay Residential district, the Highway Commercial district and the Industrial districts.

While daycare use is included in many of the town’s land use districts, the actual available space in the districts in not large enough to accommodate larger daycare’s, town staff said.

“Many of the most suitably sized and immediately available spaces are currently located in areas zoned as Highway Commercial.”

Limited day care space in town made the bylaw one that was important to pass, town staff said in their recommendation to council.

“There are significant waiting lists for families in need of daycare.”

A concern administration had during the review process was that many of the specific locations being considered are immediately adjacent to land parcels zoned for Light Industrial use, town staff said.

“Under the Early Learning and Child Care Regulation a daycare is required to provide outdoor play space for the children and administration has concerns that noise, contaminants and the type of traffic generated by potential industrial operations in the Light Industrial district may have negative impacts to the health and safety of children accessing outdoor play space.”

In order to help limit concerns a number of regulations were written so that development of a daycare adjacent to the most harmful types of commercial and industrial uses would be limited.

“This would include those uses listed in the Light Industrial District that would have a high likelihood of creating and emitting harmful levels of fumes, vapours, vibration or noise. A similar supplementary regulation is also being proposed to be added to the Light Industrial District, making future developers/businesses aware that certain uses will not be supported adjacent to a daycare facility.”

During the meeting council was content with the way the bylaw read with the supplementary regulations included and it was carried unanimously.

“Daycare wait lists aren’t weeks or months but a year plus so being able to open up spaces is important and I appreciate doing everything we can to expand options,” said Mayor Megan Hanson.

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