Car repair shops, skilled trade facilities, heavy equipment sellers — these types of places are in danger of slowly losing their space in Squamish, as commercial outlets move into the business park, a District planner said.
“I think we are at risk of slowly losing all those types of locations,” said Matt Gunn.
“So, I think we need to go in and say, ‘There are places where we’re going to allow for commercialized activity, but there are places where we’re not.’”
Putting commercial businesses such as retailers, restaurants and gyms in light industrial zones drives the rent up, creates safety code complications and forces more parking to be created, he said.
This squeezes out true light-industrial businesses. If nothing is done to ensure they have a place in the business park, there can be consequences, Gunn continued.
“We run the risk of having to travel much further for some services, or we drive services out of our community,” he said.
As a result, on Feb. 12, councillors voted unanimously in favour of asking staff to bring council suggestions for putting temporary limits on commercial uses in the business park.
Staff are expected to present these suggestions to council for approval in the future. Nothing has been finalized yet.
If temporary limits are implemented in the business park, they’re expected to be a stop-gap measure as the District updates its zoning bylaws, which could take two years.
Because staff identified this matter as the most urgent among the land-use issues, Mayor Karen Elliott proposed having staff look into making a quick bylaw change to this area.
Both she and staff acknowledged that this quick fix would be temporary and imperfect.
It would be in place until staff finish doing a full overhaul of the District’s zoning bylaws, a process which is just underway.
“I want to put a pause on some of the uses that are causing us problems, and if I just do a crude change of use, I won’t get it right, but it buys us some time to get it right,” said Elliott.
“I’m trying to find a balance between your recommendation, which is to do a full comprehensive review and my worry that I’ve got a two-year lag of a use that I don’t want in the business park anymore.”
Ideally, the full overhaul would later create better-informed, long-term changes for the business park that would override this stop-gap measure, councillors and staff said.
