NLAPP Awards Ceremony

NLAPP Awards

Since 2019, in recognition of World Town Planning Day, NLAPP has been hosting an annual awards program with two different award categories:

NLAPP Community Builder Award

This award celebrates projects or nominees who fit under one or more of the following categories:

1. Building more complete communities.
2. Excellence and innovation in land use planning, such as inclusive or accessible planning methods or techniques.
3. High standard of urban design excellence, such as innovative or accessible site design.
4. Infill or redevelopment projects that fit well within the surrounding context contribute to a sense of place and the building of a creative community.
5. Nominees or projects that improve or enhance the quality of public space through the inclusion of elements of creativity, beauty, or whimsy in their design or implementation.

NLAPP Jack Allston Memorial Award

1. This award honours the memory of Colonel Jack Allston. He was the designer of the first provincial Urban and Rural Planning Act and laid the foundation for professional land-use planning in the province at the provincial, regional, municipal and local levels.  In recognition of his foundational work in professional planning at the national, regional and provincial levels, Jack was also appointed as a Fellow of the Canadian Institute of Planners.
2. The Jack Allston Memorial Award is to recognize excellence in the coverage of local or provincial planning issues by the news media and to raise public awareness of planning issues and professional planning.

2025 NLAPP Award Winners

The 2025 NLAPP Awards Ceremony was held on Friday, November 14, 2025 at Conception Bay Town Hall in celebration of World Town Planning Day (November 8, 2025). NLAPP invited guest speaker Dr. Tolulope Victoria Akerele of Memorial University’s Geography Department to speak on “Planning Inclusive Growth – Addressing the Needs of New Residents”.

Subsequently, NLAPP was honoured to announce the following 2025 NLAPP Award Winners:

The 2025 Community Builder Award was presented to:

• The Town of Grand Falls – Windsor &
• The Grand Falls – Windsor Heritage Society

The town was laid out in accordance with Garden City principles, and its layout and design have persisted over the decades, partly thanks to the care and attention of the Town and the Heritage Society. In 1905, the Town of Grand Falls was established as a company town using Garden City principles expounded by Ebenezer Howard, possibly the first garden city outside of the United Kingdom. Worried about the impending war in Europe, Alfred Harmsworth (Baron Northcliffe) began looking for an alternative source of newsprint for his family’s newspaper and publishing business. He was a British Newspaper and publishing magnate, the owner of the Daily Mail and Daily Mirror. In 1905, the Harmsworths and Robert Reid (owner of the Newfoundland Railway) founded the Anglo-Newfoundland Development Company, and a paper mill was constructed and opened on October 9, 1909. Workers came from throughout the colony and the world to help develop the new area. At that time, only employees of the mill and workers from private businesses were permitted to live in Grand Falls. Other people settled north of the railway in a shack town known as Grand Falls Station, which became Windsor, named for the Canadian Royal Family.

The town has a layout inspired by Ebenezer Howard’s Garden City theory of 1898, with separate residential, commercial, and industrial zones, and suburban housing lots organized along a series of sweeping curvilinear streets meant to integrate scenic views and landscape into the urban experience. The state-of-the-art pulp and paper mill was among the first land-based industries to develop in Newfoundland following the completion of the railway in 1898.

The company also built shops, clubs, churches, schools, and a hospital for its workers, along with an abundance of greenery in the form of athletic fields, parks, and gardens. Company housing in Grand Falls was modelled on that in Letchworth Garden City (the world’s first garden city, built 1903-05), several heritage structures remain in place, including Grand Falls House (a Tudor Revival residence built for Alfred Harmsworth in 1909), the Grand Falls Post Office (completed in 1913), and portions of the original Anglo Newfoundland Development Co. Pulp and Paper Mill (completed in 1909 and permanently closed in 2009).

(©Information courtesy of 2025 NLAPP Nominating Committee, Grand Falls Windsor Heritage Society, Royal Architectural Institute of Canada and Wikipedia).

Shawn Feener (Award Winner, Town of Grand Falls – Windsor), Ronald (Ron) Smith (Award Winner, GFW Heritage Society), Julia Schwarz (NLAPP)

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The 2025 Jack Allston Memorial Award was presented to:

• Darrell Roberts

Darrell Roberts is a reporter for The St. John’s Morning Show on CBC Radio One. He has worked for CBC Newfoundland and Labrador since 2021. Darrell Roberts has covered municipal issues for several years now.  Many of his stories touch on municipal planning matters. They included stories about:

• Bannerman Park and the proposed illuminated landmark St. John’s sign;
• 2025 storey on the refusal and approval of federal funding support for different housing initiatives);
• Land-use conflict on St. John’s Street about a proposed 6-story apartment building on Margaret’s Place and a 121-resident signature petition opposing the proposal);
• Planning, Flooding and Climate Change (about an engineering study looking into areas potentially being affected by increased flood risk in St. John’s) ;
• Homelessness in St. John’s about the residents of Tent City at Colonial Building, one year after it was taken down;
• Public safety and policing in St. John’s (associated with perceived safety concerns downtown and at the summer pedestrian mall and requests for increased foot patrols).

Other stories included:

• A review of the St. John’s 2023 Accessibility Plan, one year after its adoption);
• Planning for a 10-storey apartment building in St. John’s;
• Municipal communications and use of Social Media X (formerly Twitter);
• Restaurants closing amid economic challenges.
• Municipal regulations, a sign and the war in Israel / Palestine;
• Crown Land ownership and a property in Portugal Cove – St. Philip’s, and an
• Old footpath and land-use conflict in St. John’s.

See also https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/author/darrell-roberts-1.6053450

Stephen Jewczyk (NLAPP), Peter Allston (Allston Family), Darrell Roberts (Award Winner; CBC), Julia Schwarz (NLAPP)

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Past Award Winners

Community Builder Award

1. East Coast Trail Association
2. Stella’s Circle
3. Heritage NL
4. First Light Newfoundland and Labrador
5. Conservation Corps of Newfoundland & Labrador (CCNL)

Jack Allston Memorial Award

1. Sarah Smellie of The Scope
2. CBC Newfoundland and Labrador, in recognition of their work on the Newburbia series
3. John Gushue of CBC for his articles on regional and local planning. Hope Jamieson for her article in The Independent on how planning is indispensable for good city governance
4. The Shoreline and The Northeast Avalon Times monthly newspapers
5. Gregory French, Lawyer of Mills Pittman and Twyne Law Offices
6. Leila Beaudoin (Cliff Anchor Studios)