The City of Winnipeg has chosen an urban planner who runs a binational consulting firm to be its new director of planning, property and development.
Hazel Borys, the CEO of Placemakers in Canada and the United States, will take over the city department responsible for land use at the end of July, Winnipeg chief administrative officer Michael Jack announced on Wednesday.
She will succeed Marc Pittet, who's served as Winnipeg's acting planning, property and development director since John Kiernan retired in 2022.
Borys said Wednesday she feels like she's taken on the job at "a really critical moment" in Winnipeg's history.
"I think we have a number of significant challenges that we'll need to address together and that's really similar to many Canadian cities right now," Borys said in an interview.
"But I think we also have both the opportunity and the responsibility to become a more resilient, livable and inclusive place.
One of those challenges will involve stemming a burgeoning trend where Winnipeg is starting to lose development opportunities to several of its immediate neighbours.
An increasing concentration of industrial, commercial and residential developments have sprouted up just outside city limits in municipalities such as Macdonald, Rosser, West St. Paul and Springfield.
Borys said she plans to work with other municipalities to ensure both the city and its neighbours benefit from a new regional planning framework ordered by the provincial government.
"My focus as the director of planning, property and development won't be about fighting over the existing pie that the region has, but how when we all work together, we can grow that pie quite a bit," she said. "So I'm not terribly concerned about where today's development capacity is going."
Borys said she believes development can intensify in existing Winnipeg neighbourhoods if the city modernizes outdated rules that govern land use.
"What the development community most struggles with is our zoning bylaw hasn't yet caught up with the policies that we have in place to help do those things," she said. "That means that development takes longer — and time is money, from a developer's perspective."
Borys suggested the city must focus on densification to achieve its development goals.
"I think we have to get back to our agricultural roots and instead of thinking about dollars per new development, we need to be thinking about dollars per hectare and jobs per hectare," she said.
"So how we can use our land more productively, just like a farmer looks at how to use her land more productively as well."
Winnipeg's mayor, a centrist conservative who hired a number of urbanists to his own staff, referenced the incoming property director's progressive leanings when he welcomed her to the city.
"Hazel has an incredible reputation as an innovator, placemaker and community builder and I look forward to working with her in this new role," Scott Gillingham said in a tweet on Wednesday.
Borys, however, chose not comment on several hot-button issues facing Winnipeg's planning, property and development department, including the revitalization of Portage and Main and a pending decision in a lawsuit against the department by developer Andrew Marquess.
Born in Alabama, Borys was educated in Ohio before she moved to Winnipeg in 2008 with her husband, Stephen Borys, who runs the Winnipeg Art Gallery-Qaumajuq.
Borys has worked in the urban planning field for 19 years. With Placemakers, she consulted for both developers and governments. She helped the City of Winnipeg develop its long-term planning framework and also sits on the Manitoba Municipal Board.
Borys said she has tendered her resignation from the municipal board, whose powers have been expanded to include the ability to overturn City of Winnipeg land-use decisions.
She also said she will divest herself of an ownership stake in the U.S. side of Placemakers and dissolve the Canadian company of the same name.