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What about examples of community services or businesses?¶
The RS Zone enables limited Community Uses and Commercial Uses. The Community Service Use is a “development for institutional, cultural, recreational, religious, spiritual, social, arts and educational activities that provide a service to the public and may involve people gathering at peak times and creating intermittent impacts such as noise and traffic.”
Some examples of what could be allowed under this Use include:
- community halls
- community recreation centres
- religious assemblies
However, there are limitations to the size and scale of this Use within the RS Zone. The Community Services Use is limited to a maximum floor area of 1,000 m² and only allowed:
- on corner sites, next to a collector or arterial road;
- in an existing non-residential building; or
- on a site where the interior side lot line is next to a non-residential zone
Some exceptions apply to Child Care Services. For example, a Child Care Service is permitted on any corner site where proposed in a building previously developed as a Single Detached House. However, Child Care Services are limited to a maximum floor area of 300 m².
There are five commercial uses allowed in the RS Zone:
- Food and Drink Service
- Health Service
- Indoor Sales and Service
- Office
- Residential Sales Centre
These uses are only allowed if they are developed on a site that is next to a site in a non-residential zone that already allows commercial uses.
Additional regulations apply to these Uses to ensure that they do not create a nuisance to surrounding residential developments. These include:
- limiting the floor area to 300 m² per business;
- not permitting any outdoor business activity, storage, and outdoor speakers or amplification systems; and
- limiting outdoor seating to a maximum area of 20 m² and being located only in the front yard or flanking side yard (next to a side street).
These uses, and their associated regulations, were included to allow for more businesses to thrive within Edmonton’s existing neighbourhoods — to allow for local nodes to expand and grow to serve the neighbourhood where people can meet their daily needs closer to home.