Balancing growth: Airdrie's residential population is growing, the city plans to grow the business sector along with it

With a growing city comes growing expenses, in order to make sure that the influx of new residents aren’t overly burdened, the city needs a growing non-residential tax base.

In 2024 Airdrie’s tax assessments saw an 87-13 split, with 87 per cent being for residential assessment and 13 per cent being for non-residential assessments.

“There is no magic number,” he said.

“There is a constant push for more residential so we need to do extra effort on the non-residential side to try to keep the balance.”

Galanti said that as an intermediate goal, they are pushing towards an 80-20 split while the longer term goal would be to achieve a 75-25 split.

“The ultimate goal is to be a 75 per cent total residential assessment value versus 25 per cent non-residential assessment value,” said Stephen Utz, Director of Strategic Growth and Investment for the city.

“Back in 2018, (Airdrie City) Council adopted the 12,000 acres plan, which takes all the land that we annexed from Rocky View County in 2012 and sets out general land use. If implemented to its full extent it would ultimately lead us towards a 75-25 split on a 50 year horizon.”

In recent years, the city’s downtown plan has been adding to both the residential and non-residential tax base. With several new developments, including 16,500 square feet of commercial space and 213 residential units on the north end of the city.

“I think the downtown plan is going very well,” said Utz.

“One thing I would say is that the downtown planning did not specify that we were looking for any specific type of land use or category, what we really were doing was ensuring that we had increased development value and capacity overall, both residential and non-residential, and the capacity that we have for it is equivalent to about 5,300 residents, or about 8,800 jobs. So we still have a fair amount of capacity to go and we’re continuing to try and incentivize development to the downtown.”

“To date, the growth for the tax rate side has been over $700,000 between 2023 and 2024 and is increasing every year,” said Monica Labait, Manager of Treasury for the City of Airdrie.

“So it’s definitely on the rise, and we are seeing some significant value being added to the downtown area.”

Marilyn Aalhaus, Executive Director for the Airdrie Regional Chamber of Commerce, sees industrial growth as a key for the future of Airdrie.

“Obviously, commercial growth is fantastic for a city that continues to grow,” said Aalhaus. “New businesses that are different and exciting and draw people, not only residents but maybe visitors, into the community are obviously huge attraction. I think what we cannot deny, though, is they may not seem as exciting, but we need industrial growth. Industrial is obviously on the outskirts of the city, but that industrial growth is what pays for the land, and it generates substantial tax revenue for a city.”

Galanti said that the city is interested in growing that industrial tax base, but it may not be what many think of when they hear the term.

“We continue making efforts to rebalance the tax base, particularly with industrial. When we say industrial, we’re looking for high tech ideation. We’re not talking about heavy, heavy manufacturing, but rather high tech industries that we’re trying to bring here,” he said.

That kind of growth is especially important for urban municipalities, according to Galanti.

“What is different between Rocky View County and the urban municipalities is that the county, with a very large geographic footprint, they’re receiving a significant amount of linear tax that we don’t get for all the oil and machinery and equipment, and electrical substations, et cetera. So they have a source of revenue that we don’t have,” Galanti said, pointing out that this is not unique to the situation with Airdrie and Rocky View County but is true throughout the province.

“They have the ability to provide some subsidies to different tax classes… It puts us in a less competitive situation with the county.”

In order to attract businesses to Airdrie the city has a lower non-residential tax rate than many other nearby municipalities.

“We really try hard to keep our non-residential tax rates reasonable compared to our municipal comparisons,” said Shannon Schindeler, CFO and Director of Corporate Services for the City of Airdrie. “In Rocky View, their non-residential tax rates are 3.5 times their residential tax rate, Calgary is 4.4 times higher, and Airdrie is at 2.1 times (the residential tax rate). So we really do try to incentivize that (non-residential development).”

The City of Airdrie has no business tax, and the city believes they have a strong pitch to potential businesses.

“We have really great marketing opportunities here,” Utz said.

“Airdrie is a young, dynamic community with great quality of life and a lot of services that employers look for… We also have a very large labor force and it’s somewhat untapped locally, so that can also be a contributing factor for people making location decisions for non-residential uses here in Airdrie.”

The biggest challenge facing industrial growth right now is a lack of available space, but there are opportunities opening up.

“City Council adopted the East Points Community Area Structure Plan, which is six quarter sections of primarily non-residential land on the east side, back in early 2020,” Utz said.

“And from that we have one quarter section that is getting started, called Spring Valley. They have their neighborhood structure plan in place. They’ve done some grading, and they will be bringing on 53 acres of non-residential land this year, so that is already starting to try and provide that additional capacity.”

While the residential to non-residential tax split is leaning more towards residential than where the city is aiming to be, it is just one of many growth related issues city administration and council are monitoring.

“Well, you know, this is a matter of constant conversation among administration and council,” said Galanti.

“What is the right pace of growth? We all like growth. Rapid growth for a long period of time brings significant challenges, particularly on the services side. We’re monitoring very carefully our sanitary sewer capacity, our drinking water capacity, our traffic congestion times, our response times. So there are multiple factors that we’re constantly monitoring to see what the right pace of growth is. So far, we’re in that stage of monitoring. I believe last year we grew 6.4 per cent and in 2025 I think the forecast is low seven per cent. So those are very high growth numbers. We need to be careful with the challenges associated with that growth. So we’re monitoring that. So far, council and administration haven’t intervened in the natural forces of the market, but it’s something that may need some interventions in the future. Just to make sure water is there, sewers are there, traffic is manageable, and the overall budget is manageable.”