There's a lot of useable space in the city's downtown area, and local resident Kirk Cameron wants to see it used.

In a presentation to city council Monday evening, Cameron made it clear he was speaking on his own behalf and not from his involvement with the Downtown Residents Association or the territorial Liberal party, for which he ran in December's byelection in Whitehorse Centre.

With a lot of hard work, he said, a community vision for the downtown could be established and the extra space around town could be used to create that vision.

"There's a lot of space out there,” he said, displaying photos of abandoned or vacant properties scattered throughout the downtown. Those sites, he said, could be used to address the need for housing throughout the city.

Along with the vacant and abandoned properties, Cameron also showed photos of what he termed "legacy use” in the downtown area, including the Greyhound bus depot, Pioneer Cemetery and Whitehorse Motors, questioning if some of those properties are the best use of the downtown sector.

Cameron acknowledged there is a lot of the NIMBY (Not In My Backyard) attitude when it comes to residential development in the neighbourhood he both grew up in and is now living in.

He argued there needs to be a debate and active engagement to decide on the future of the area.

Pointing to his own condo at the Bling site, Cameron suggested if the same density of 12 units per block was applied to the empty or abandoned lots throughout the city, the downtown population, currently at 2,500, could grow to 9,792, potentially taking a third of the infill needed through the city.

He also suggested revisiting the possibility of building near the clay cliffs. He pointed to an example in Kelowna, B.C., where homes have been built on a hillside. He cited another example in the Northwest Territories where a hotel was built around a rock surface.

"You can do innovative things with engineering,” said Cameron, who also suggested looking at raising the building height limit to allow for more than four storeys downtown, said.

The possibility of building and developing closer to the clay cliffs has been broached in recent weeks with an application for 609 Drury St. to be zoned back to residential use rather than the current Environmental Protection.

Council has put off the rezoning for now. However, the issue has stirred up debate among former residents of the escarpment area who were bought out of their homes through a government program in the 1970s under the belief their properties would be expropriated due to the cliffs' instability.

The formal expropriation never actually went ahead. A few residents, such as those at 609 Drury St., remained in their homes.

New studies have shown the cliffs to be more stable than originally thought, but former residents who left have argued it's not fair now to rezone one property back to residential use after they left all those years ago feeling as though they would be forced out.

At the same time the rezoning is being pondered, the city has also identified an area closer to the clay cliffs near Fifth Avenue that could be considered for development, adding to what's becoming a debate of how close to the cliffs development can happen.

Regardless of the outcome of those decisions down the road, Cameron suggested it's time to have a discussion on just what the vision for the downtown should be.

The fact that many of the vacant or abandoned properties are privately owned had councillors like Ranj Pillai questioning how those can be dealt with.

Pillai pointed to the vacant former Canadian Tire store as an example of a property that has yet to be sold and where the property owner won't sell to a competitor, but will await a buyer looking at a completely different use of the building, which housed The Bay store before Canadian Tire took it over as its former premises.

Cameron suggested other groups with different interests who could use the building could be looked at to see if they have any interest in buying it.

In other cases, the city could look to property owners who have left their properties to find out why they have been left vacant or abandoned and what it would take to make things happen on their land.

"I think we have a gem here in the centre (of town),” Cameron told council.

Mayor Bev Buckway said Tuesday she was pleased to hear suggestions both from Cameron and another developer proposing a green housing project downtown that would increase density in the area, noting the ideas go even further than what the Official Community Plan and sustainability plan propose for thickening density.

City manager Dennis Shewfelt noted Monday evening the city is already planning to get the discussion going on the future of the downtown, with a charette planned for later this year.

That will be an ideal time to get property owners involved and identify potential barriers to redeveloping some of the properties.

"Some of it's a gradual process,” Buckway said of seeing change in the neighbourhood.

As for whether there might be any development closer to the clay cliffs, Buckway stated the 1970s program was a "voluntary buy-out”.

Though she wasn't involved at the time and can't speak to exactly what happened, she did note there are differences in the reports of 30-plus years ago and now.

Before any development is considered or goes ahead closer to the escarpment though, she said, there would have to be even more detailed engineering reports done and considered.