Our planners bring a strategic approach to helping our clients realize their goals. Challenges form opportunities for us: We use this information and stakeholder engagements to offer insights on best practices and risk mitigations, creating implementable plans that move the dial toward their vision.
PLANNING
LAND USE & DEVELOPMENT APPROVALS
Our comprehensive understanding of provincial planning legislation, as well as our experience working with local governments, means we can capably administer the development approval process on behalf of property owners, builders, and developers. Our planners have extensive experience working with all the technical disciplines required to make development projects a reality, giving us the ability to effectively communicate changes and requirements and work as the coordinating planning professional for our clients.
- Area structure plans
- Area redevelopment plans
- Outline plans
- Land use concept designs
- Land use and zoning bylaw amendments
- Rezonings
- Subdivisions
- Development permits
- Development variance permits
- Road closures
- Development review services
COMMUNITY PLANNING & POLICY
Deep experience informs our approach to all our planning practices. We’re continuously keeping a pulse on emerging trends, and we use this and our experience with land use and development approvals gives us a thorough understanding of how to write effective and implementable plans, and create land use and zoning bylaws that directly implement policy.
- Regional plans
- Inter-municipal development plans
- Official Community Plans
- Municipal development plans
- Growth management plans
- Neighbourhood plans
PUBLIC & STAKEHOLDER ENGAGEMENT
Great communication leads to exceptional planning. Identifying who will be influenced and affected and the associated risks of projects requires careful consideration of the engagement strategies that should be employed. Using many options for participation to ensure a broad spectrum of stakeholders can participate and engage from online engagement tools to face-to-face meetings are central to everything we do.
- Engagement strategies
- Stakeholder analysis
- Engagement communications
- Conflict resolution
- Facilitation
- Decision-support frameworks
- Consensus and multi-party decision-making processes
- Stakeholder feedback analysis
- Engagement reporting
- Online surveys and crowdsourcing
Click here to learn more about our public engagement services.
RECREATION
Recreational activities are life-enhancing. Access to good recreational facilities can strengthen communities. As recognized leaders in recreation planning, our team brings decades of experience and can help your community create recreational spaces that bring people together.
What We Do:
- Recreation policies
- Recreation master and management planning
- Facility feasibility assessments
- Recreation asset inventories
- Coaster, chairlift, and zipline design and certification
- Outdoor and action sport facility designs
- Recreation facility contract administration
- Public and community engagement
Our outdoor recreation infrastructure work is often supported by our digital public engagement services. Learn more about digital public engagement here.
TOURISM
Tourism is fiercely competitive. Successful destinations capitalize on their competitive advantages and deliver exceptional experiences, which motivates visitors to choose their destination.
Our interdisciplinary tourism team can help create a strategic, visitor-focused destination.
What We Do:
- Tourism policies
- Tourism resource inventories
- Destination development and management planning
- Resort master planning
- Coaster, chairlift, and zipline design and certification
- Visitor infrastructure design
- Public and community engagements
- Construction and contract administration
Our outdoor recreation infrastructure work is often supported by our digital public engagement services. Learn more about digital public engagement here.
Tourism image courtesy of Grouse Mountain.
STRATEGIC PLANNING
Our experience working in the local government sector and on development projects gives us the unique perspective of understanding Council priorities and needs with both managing and facilitating growth in a community. We specialize in working with clients to develop strategic plans to identifying funding opportunities, and provide decision-making frameworks in support of new initiatives.
- Community visions
- Inter-municipal collaboration frameworks
- Strategic municipal business planning
- Council priority plans
- Decision-making frameworks
- Growth strategies
- Funding, financing, cost-sharing, and cost-recovery approaches, including: Development Cost Changes (DCCs), Community Amenity Charges (CACs), and Density Bonus systems
URBAN DESIGN
As an integrative function, our planners and designers collaborate to create urban spaces that reflect the unique ecological, physical, and social context of each of our projects. We provide designs that aren’t just attractive, they have effective implementation strategies including funding and financing.
- Urban design master plans
- Public realm strategies
- Downtown revitalization strategy
- Master planning
- Redevelopment policy and concepts
- Mainstreets studies and guidelines
- Funding strategies
TRANSPORTATION PLANNING
Well-planned and efficient transport networks are a key to providing equitable access to our communities and supporting a sustainable economy. Through smart planning and collaboration, our team identifies the policies, design needs, and goals of transportation networks to connect and transform communities.
- Transportation modelling and forecasting
- Active transportation network analysis
- Transit routing, forecasting and network analysis
- Multimodal connectivity
- Spatial analysis
- Business casing
- Traffic impact analysis
- Congestion mitigation and mobility pricing
- Economic impact analysis
- Policy recommendation and research
- Transportation master planning and urban mobility strategies
- Road safety analysis
- Vehicle and cycling parking planning and policy review
SUSTAINABILITY, CLIMATE RESILIENCE & ASSET MANAGEMENT
Sustainability is integral to what we do. McElhanney offers a comprehensive suite of sustainability, climate resilience, and asset management services designed to address the unique, multi-faceted challenges our clients face – both today and into the future.
Through our integrated approach, we empower communities and organizations to thrive in a changing world. Learn more about our Sustainability, Climate Resilience & Asset Management Services here.