The District of Squamish Council voted 4-3 at a council meeting on Nov. 18 to advance a rezoning application at 1001 Finch Drive Building 2. The rezoning will replace office space with 100 per cent purpose-built market rental housing.
Mayor Hurford, Councillors John French, Andrew Hamilton, and Jenna Stoner voted in favour of the motion. Councillors Anderson, Pettingill, and Greenlaw voted against it. Staff recommending approval to replace three floors of unbuilt office space with about 30 market rental units.
Staff say the proposed reduction in employment space, from 50 per cent to 22 per cent of gross floor area, aligns with recent mixed-use developments. They added that the office component was deemed “no longer financially viable” after the pandemic.
Several councillors argued that this would weaken the long-term plan for the Logger East neighbourhood, which intends to match local housing with jobs.
Councillor Jenna Stoner introduced an amendment for city staff to provide more clarity on four key areas: securing 100 child-care spaces proposed in Building 1, adding a sunset clause on the land development agreement to ensure the building gets built in a “reasonable” timeline and that the developer doesn’t “just hold on to the land further,” in addition to increasing the secured number of family-oriented three-bedroom units in the market rentals and securing a no gas covenant for all uses on the site.
Councillor John French argued in favour of the necessary compromise, stating that the current option was “one of the only things that’s going to work at this location in this time in this current reality”.
“We know now that the office space that was proposed a few years ago is no longer viable banks are not touching this type of development so why would we demand the construction of office space just to have it built knowing that there’s little to no demand for it so the space sits unoccupied for who knows how long,” he said.
Mayor Armand Hurford also supported advancing the project, saying that without the change, the original plan “will not be built.” He also emphasized the practical reality that the proposal represents “what can be built under the current conditions.” “I do think that we have a well-documented need for rental housing,” he said.
“Our role as in local government is to be setting forward visions and plans and regulations for the market to play in… we can’t constantly react to what the market demand is because then we can’t execute a vision,” Councillor Andrew Hamilton said.
Councillor Stoner questioned the value proposition of the trade-off, arguing it was “not a fair trade-off” given the amount of work put into the planning process. She noted that the concessions were requested to make the development viable, and the council’s job is to ensure the community receives promised benefits.
“This is our way of trying to actually hold developers accountable for the commitments that they’re making to our community so that we can actually realize the benefits that come with development.”
Councillor Eric Anderson opposed the final conditional motion, saying that the sunset clause introduced a potential “precedent” that could worry the developer community. He did however support the concept of securing child-care and the no gas covenant.
“In the Loggers Lane East plan the employment space issue really is the displacement of medium industrial that’s the key employment space issue that arose out of that land use plan… I have a list of 25 companies looking for industrial land and none of them are light industrial or office; they’re all large format light industrial and medium industrial.”
