Calgary lake communities

Nine communities on this site have a private lake, and Calgary offers the housing type at a scale almost no other Canadian city does. Lake Bonavista started it. Keith Construction began developing around a man-made lake in 1967 and dug the 52-acre lake itself in 1968, using the spoil to raise a 65-foot hill with a waterfall on it, and the community still claims to be the first in Canada built this way. Seven of the nine sit in the southeast and the run has never really stopped: Sundance in 1982, McKenzie Lake in 1984, Chaparral in 1995, Auburn Bay in 2005, Mahogany approved by council in 2007. The northwest and the northeast have exactly one each, Arbour Lake from 1992 and Coral Springs from 1991, and the southwest has none. Midnapore is the outlier in both directions: a hamlet Calgary annexed on 30 December 1961, whose lake was dredged in the summer of 1976 by moving 1,150,000 cubic metres of earth, about 32,000 of which raised the 17-metre toboggan hill in the park next door. The water itself ranges from Coral Springs at 16 acres to Mahogany at 63, the largest in the city, which also carries a 74-acre protected wetland and a 21,000 square foot beach club.

What the nine share is a legal mechanism rather than an amenity. Every lot carries an encumbrance or a caveat registered against its certificate of title obliging the owner to pay the residents association each year, whether the lake gets used or not, and the obligation transfers with the house. Past that they diverge, which is why the fees are not comparable line by line. The figures the associations currently publish run from $317.63 for a regular lot in Arbour Lake to $523.92 for a standard lot in Auburn Bay, and several of them tier the charge by how close the lot is to the water: a lakeshore lot in Auburn Bay pays $1,047.80 and one in Arbour Lake $635.25. Chaparral, Coral Springs and Mahogany do not publish an amount openly at all, and Chaparral's fees page no longer says how the amount is set either. Due dates are spread across 1 January, 1 April, 30 June and 1 July, and guest limits run from five people a household a day at Arbour Lake to twelve at Sundance. Confirm the current amount, the tier and the access rules with the association before you budget.