For a few more dollars… a northern residential neighborhood responds to encircling development in Yellowknife, NWT
Simon Taylor
t he glacial action of Yellowknife’s suburban development grinds past my very eyes every morning, effortlessly removing segments of my neighborhood piece by piece, leaving only small remnants to signify what was once there. One such sign is my ten-year-old daughter’s bus stop, located on the opposite side of 43rd street from Trail’s End Trailer park where I live.This street used to serve only Trail’s End, however, the City of Yellowknife has converted it into the main access road for the City’s new Niven Lake high-end residential development. For years the road was dormant, as Niven Lake did not immediately attract the requisite number of buyers; in the last three years an economic boom and new development have changed the once vacant road into a fast and heavily traveled main artery. Contractors and suppliers travel to and from their building sites in one direction and new residents leave or return from work in the other.The speed and frequency of travel has increased exponentially.The bus stop that was once safely part of the neighbor- hood is gone. The impact of the large Niven Lake development on the existing adja- cent residential areas is obviously not considered as significant in the long term planning of this area of Yellowknife. Perhaps this is because any problems are ‘offset’ by the inevitable increase in land prices, with the expectation that the adjacent residents will elect to make fast prop- erty sale profits or construct larger suburban houses, slowly replacing the trailers and upgrading the quality and image of the area. This is not in fact what is actually happening. Rather than sell their properties, the residents of this trailer park have instead started to spruce them up, while keeping the trailers as the fundamental form on each property. Renovations range from house painting to large addi- tions.Aside from my own addition, architects were not used in the development of the designs and City planning rules are minimal for this area (with the exception of the maximum height 7.5m versus 10m for most other residential areas). Despite this, and the fact that each
project was undertaken separately, each project seems to have followed a similar approach, leaving the street quality of the trailer court largely unchanged, further defining the neighborhood against the imposition of the new developments. The new additions increase the interior space of each residence, pro- vide work space and perhaps gain access to views across Yellowknife Old Town and Yellowknife Bay.The trailers are a hodge-podge of old single- and double-wides and old mining camp trailers.Their construc- tion is not really geared for northern winter conditions, with badly built windows, no entrance vestibules and thinly insulated walls, roofs and floors. Most trailers are not located on rock and they have to be re-leveled every few years else they take on the appearance and feel that they are sinking. In addition, their interior spaces are often small with narrow corridors and poor access to natural light; they are difficult to heat and most have wood stoves.This said, they are inexpensive relative to conventional housing — the big selling point for most of the fiscally responsible residents of Trail’s End. In Yellowknife, residential options are rental apartments, wood frame houses and trailers.With the recent economic boom, apartment rental rates have skyrocketed as have residential construction costs.A two-bedroom apartment rents for approximately $1500 per month and residential construction cost almost $200/square foot.Trailers on the other hand are relatively inexpensive — ranging from $100,000 to $250,000 (including property). Trail’s End, for the most part, contains middle income professionals not interested in assuming three-quarters of a million dollar mortgages.The new additions all take advantage of the by-law height limitations, adding second storeys or lookouts that include large and strategically located windows, providing real estate ‘lake-view’ credentials.With a maximum investment of between ten to fifty thousand dollars for new additions, the residents have almost doubled their living space while maintaining minimum mortgage payments.
On Site review 11
35
Spring 2004
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