Reject OCP amendment application for Cheema Lands: District staff to Council

District of Squamish staff is recommending that Council reject an application by developer Bob Cheema to amend the OCP to extend the Growth Management Boundary.

The Council will discuss the amendment application at a meeting tomorrow, April 5.

Cheema made a similar application to extend the District’s growth boundary last year and has made similar requests in 2020 and 2017 too, all of which failed.

The DL 509 and 510 lands in Garibaldi Highlands, also known as Cheema Lands, are presently designated in the OCP as Future Residential Neighbourhood. The application is for the lands to be designated as Residential Neighbourhood. The staff says that while the population threshold requirement has been met for this application, it still doesn’t meet the policy requirements in OCP policy.

“Given the outstanding policy work at this time required by Policy 9.2(h) (Brand Asset Inventory and Steep Slopes DPA), staff recommend defeat of the first reading,” notes the staff report.

The policy details can be found on page 30 of the Squamish OCP January 2022.

However, the staff says the two outstanding policy projects should be completed by the end of 2023, which would allow the Council to consider the proposed expansion of the GMB provided the impacts identified in the policy have been considered.

Those impacts include an increase in operations and maintenance costs to the District; changes to wildlife, air quality, aquatic and terrestrial systems and ecosystem services; changes in the health and social well-being of the community; and an increase in vehicular traffic and barriers to active transportation.

In the recommendation to reject the project, the staff also notes that the District’s capacity to accommodate residential growth in the short-term remains sufficient.  The staff say the number of projects (small and large) that are getting to the Building Permit stage within the Growth Management Boundary is higher than what would have been needed to accommodate the population growth that occurred between 2016 and 2021.

“Given that a number of larger and multi phased projects are either ready to launch or have recently launched construction, the short-term demand for housing supply in Squamish will be sufficiently addressed within the boundary,” the report says.

The report also notes the time it would take to do planning work on the Cheema Lands application.

“It is important to note that the planning work required for this proposal would likely take at least five years before there is any development-related activity on the property and another three years before the first residential units are completed. This means that once the planning process starts, it would likely take approximately eight years before these lands start adding residential units to accommodate growth in Squamish.”