The City of Regina is looking to make changes to rules around infill development in existing neighbourhoods.

The move is to encourage land developers to use current vacant lots around Regina, and could be done through enhanced transit, community cleanup programs, and legislative tax changes to punish landowners who have removed sites from the market but leave them underutilized.

Mayor Michael Fougere said the city has identified areas that need more development.

“We have identified what those lots look like, where they’re at, and now we’re looking at ways to incent the private sector to move forward and develop those lands.”

Fougere said the city will need to approach the province to amend the city’s act for council to make these changes.

“I think the administration will craft information for us, but this is also political lobbying, so this would be me speaking with the minister responsible for this, and the Premier, and others, to say ‘we would like to have this happen, can you make the change?’”

Fougere adds all of this is to prevent more vacant lots in neighbourhoods within the city, including downtown, while the city expands further east and west.

Parking at Taylor Field

What was once home to the Saskatchewan Roughriders could soon be used as a temporary parking lot.

Regina City Council is looking at the possibility of using the now-vacant site for overflow parking for Evraz place events such as Rider games, Agribition, or the Queen City Ex, and could even be used by staff at the Pasqua hospital.

Councillor Jerry Flegel came up with the enquiry, and said it would allow for approximately one thousand more parking spots.

“It’s sitting there vacant, the RRI is phase three, so once phase three comes, which could be anywhere from 0-10 years,” Flegel said. “We’ve got RRI number two, Dewdney lands, next, stadium was first, and we’re just going to continue to build on that, and that eventually, we talked about 750 houses and commercial along the rail line.”

Flegel said there have been no issues presented to him about this plan.

“Everybody has seen the enquiry a month ago, and to date I have not had anybody come to me (or administration) and say that it’s good bad or indifferent,” Flegel said. “We’ll see in the next couple-three weeks.”

Flegel said this alleviates a parking problem on the grounds on a short term basis.

“The long-term would be to maybe keep some of that somewhere for overflow parking from the stadium and major events,” Flegel said. “But sometimes when the park is busy, it’s just busy and there’s no getting around it, and that’s not a bad thing.”

The current plan to place housing on the site would not be interrupted , as that plan is still a few years away.