Lake communities foster a healthy and active lifestyle
Cindy Stephen, for the Calgary Herald
Debbie and Greg Peterson love all the amenities of living in a lake community. Here they are in their backyard in Auburn Bay.	Christina Ryan/Postmedia
The first residential community in Canada built around a man-made lake was Lake Bonavista in Calgary. It was 1967 when Keith Construction took a piece of bald prairie south of Anderson Road, east side of Macleod Trail and turned it into a suburban resort with year-round recreational opportunities.
The Petersons were one of the community's first families in the late 1960s. Greg Peterson, a lawyer and former all-star defensive back for the Calgary Stampeders, spent most of his teenage years at the lake with his three brothers, soaking up as much lake life as he could.
"Basically, every day in the summer, that's all we did. We got up in the morning and went to the lake. We swam, played shuffleboard or football. We'd spend the entire day there," he recalls.
"My mom would come over most summer nights and bring supper. My dad would come over after work. I grew up loving the lake, even in the winter — we'd skate around and stuff," says Peterson, whose brother Brent went on to play and coach in the National Hockey League.
When Peterson started his own family with his wife Debbie, he wanted his children to enjoy the same experiences. They moved to Lake McKenzie in southeast Calgary and when circumstances finally permitted, contracted Albi Homes (now Brookfield Residential) to build them a house right on the lake in Auburn Bay.
"Now, our grandkids are enjoying the lake. We've got the paddleboards and the kayaks and they jump off the dock. They just love it," he says.
Fifty years after Calgary developers dove head-first into creating such expensive yet alluring amenities, Hopewell Residential (Lake Mahogany) and Bordeaux Properties and Qualico Communities (Harmony) are the latest and perhaps the last developers to create residential lake communities.
Mahogany's 25.5-hectare connected lakes are surrounded by homes, parks, playgrounds and sandy beaches with a 22,000-square-foot beach club amenity centre for the exclusive use of residents. Hopewell has won multiple awards for the concept and design of the lake and surrounding neighbourhood.
"As an amenity, a lake is a fantastic differentiator and an important feature which fosters healthy and active lifestyles for all ages," says Birol Fisekci, president and chief executive officer of Bordeaux Properties, developer of Harmony, a community west of Calgary in Springbank. In addition to a golf course, the developer has created two connected recreational lakes with surrounding wetland areas.
Like many residential lakes, the lake in Harmony is safe for swimming, stocked with fish and open to non-motorized watercraft.
But as fun as it is to splash around in a lake in your own back yard, there's a lot of groundwork and planning that must be done first.
At a total depth of 14 metres, the basin took four months to fill to its capacity of 1.1 million cubic metres of water with continuous pumping from the Bow River and is an important component of the area's environmental water strategy.
"When designing the lake, we took in factors which any developer would consider, such as natural topography and drainage. Detailed geotechnical studies were completed to determine if the native soils would retain the water or if a liner would be needed. Water table and ground water monitoring was completed over several years and we conducted detailed modelling of storm water runoff, rainfall and evaporation to ensure that the lake remains full of water," Fisekci says.
The constructed wetland areas, so popular in most new communities throughout Calgary, were built along drainage channels and along the edges of the lake.
"Constructed wetlands clean the storm water before it enters the lake and provide valuable habitat. Internally in the lake, there are three treatment systems — ozonation, aeration and circulation — which are in place to keep the water clean and to prevent algae growth. This is a critical part of our system, which to our knowledge does not exist in any other lake community in Canada," he continues.
The construction cost was approximately $15 million, but was a labour of love, despite the risks and challenges of being around water, which Fisekci says can be reduced through education and common sense.
"We have to respect the water, but water is life," he explains. "From childhood to adulthood and into our senior years, for many of us, water is one of the most desirable ways to lead a healthy lifestyle. The ability to come home after work or school and hop on a paddleboard, go swimming or drop a fishing line in the water is incredibly therapeutic to all of us. If you layer in the social aspects of having a lake in your community, it's a combination that can't be beat."
He has a sense that the lakes currently under construction in and around Calgary might be the last.
"In today's regulatory environment, I believe it is unlikely we will see another new lake community in the Calgary area again. Harmony is one of Calgary's biggest lakes and we certainly will not see something of this magnitude again."
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