Sechelt council has given the people behind a major development proposal in West Sechelt “permission to proceed” with their application.
The idea of granting permission to proceed is a relatively new policy at Sechelt council designed to avoid situations where developers and planning staff put a lot of effort into a proposal that council is unlikely to support.
Projects that get permission to proceed still have to go through all the normal approvals and the Grand Excelsior Investments proposal is still in the very early stages.
The company wants to consolidate four properties north of Highway 101 and west of Wakefield Road into a 128-hectare (319-acre) block with a new comprehensive (CD) zoning.
According to a report from the planning department to the Sept. 16 council meeting, the four properties “contain a variety of official community plan designations ranging from resource lands at the western end to multi-family/mixed residential on the east side.”
The report also notes that two large parcels are still under a previous comprehensive zone, CD 27, created for a project that did not go forward. The other two parcels are zoned residential and rural-residential.
“Although this is an unserviced property on the edge of a developed neighbourhood it does, for the most part, contain official community plan designations and related zoning that is favourable for future development,” the report said.
In its application letter to the District of Sechelt the company said, “When fully built-out, Grand Excelsior Investments Inc. envisions a mixed residential community consisting of approximately 850 families with convenient access to community amenities and services.”
That full build-out would happen over a 10 to 20-year time frame.
“According to the census, Sechelt has about 1.9 residents per household,” Coun. Matt McLean said. “That means this development could add about 1,600 residents to Sechelt’s population.”
McLean said if the build-out happens on the 10-year time line, the development could account for as much as 67 per cent of the district’s planned growth.
“Right now, I don’t think this property is deserving of 67 per cent of Sechelt’s growth,” McLean said. “There are many other locations that are better suited for development before this one. However, that’s not the decision we’re making today.”
McLean said he was prepared to support granting permission to proceed because the site “has potential to be better than what has been proposed” and he wanted to give the developer and staff an opportunity to “make this site worthy of creating the majority of our growth in the next few years.”
Mayor Darnelda Siegers said she wants to see School District No. 46 involved as the application is refined because of the possibility the population growth may lead to the need for a new or expanded school.
“One of the things that I know happens in other communities when you have a master development like this is sometimes [the developer] contributes a site for a school, or depending on the size of the development, sometimes actually build a school.”
There was no timeline given for when the application will be ready for first reading.
