City of Winnipeg planning staff are recommending council approve, with amendments, a secondary plan that would open the door to development across more than 900 acres of South Transcona. According to a report going before the East Kildonan-Transcona Community Committee, the plan would set the land-use, servicing and transportation policy for the area known as Precinct S, bounded by Dugald Road to the north, St. Boniface Road to the south, Plessis Road to the west and Murdock Road to the east. The plan has drawn concern from area residents in the past. Fred Hamm, who lives on a wooded property backing onto the Transcona Golf Club, told CTV News in November about his concerns with an earlier version of the plan. “It’s 15 minutes from Portage and Main, it’s country living, and it’s peace and quiet,” Hamm said. “It’s everything you’d want.” The roughly 1,300-acre plan area includes about 927 acres slated for new housing and development across four sections — the Acreages, the Hamlet, and the East and West Town areas — along with the existing Transcona Golf Club and Buhler Recreation Park, which remain in their current use. At full build-out, the report says the East and West Town areas are expected to hold about 6,400 housing units, with roughly 1,000 more units in the Acreages and Hamlet. The application follows more than two years of planning led by two private landowners — Taggart Properties Inc. and Goldstone Group Limited — in consultation with city staff under a terms of reference signed in January 2024. The plan envisions housing types ranging from single-family homes to multi-storey buildings of up to eight storeys in designated “Town Gateway Centre” areas, with lower-density housing in the Acreages and Hamlet. City planning documents put the area’s long-term population capacity at up to 20,000 people. At the time, Hamm told CTV News he was worried about losing property to new roads planned for the area and that he couldn’t afford to hook up to a planned water and sewer system, estimating the cost at around $120,000 based on his property’s frontage. City planning staff are recommending council approve the plan, subject to 22 changes to the applicant’s draft, when it comes forward for first reading. Among the changes, staff are recommending a new policy that would block phases of development requiring access to Plessis Road until that road is twinned — a project listed as a medium-term priority, sometime between 2034 and 2050, in the city’s Transportation Master Plan. Both Plessis Road and Dugald Road are nearing capacity and will eventually need to be twinned to accommodate the development, the report says, in addition to a new internal road network including a “high street” collector along Esselmont Avenue connecting Plessis Road to Dugald Road. Neither twinning project currently has city funding attached. A new fire station will also be needed to meet Winnipeg Fire and Paramedic Services response-time targets in South Transcona, the report says. The project is listed as “currently unfunded.” A financial analysis included in the report estimates $111.5 million in capital costs are tied specifically to South Transcona. Of that amount, the city would cover $84.5 million and developers would pay $27 million. The report projects the development will net the city $551 million over 75 years, but not before the city’s tax-supported budget runs a cumulative deficit — peaking at $7 million — for roughly 25 years. “As a result, existing taxpayers subsidize the upfront infrastructure and servicing costs during early years of South Transcona’s development,” reads the report. It notes that none of these capital projects are funded as of Aug. 5. Hamm told CTV News at the time that some of the proposals felt like too much. “Apartment blocks and high-rises, that’s going a little too far,” he said. A hearing before the East Kildonan-Transcona Community Committee is scheduled for Thursday, Aug. 13. If the committee backs the recommendation, the plan would move to the Standing Policy Committee on Property and Development for further consideration. With files from CTV’s Jeff Keele
