District of Squamish council defeated a long sought-out retail outlet proposal for the industrial park on Tuesday night (March 27), following a staff recommendation.
Council agreed they should not amend the Official Community Plan bylaw (OCP) in order to allow for a 10-hectare Parallax commercial development because it no longer fits the original plan of a factory outlet.
"I believe strongly that the intent for that business park is for larger retail developments, or big box stores if we can find them," said Coun. Corinne Lonsdale.
"At this point in time I believe anything smaller can be accommodated, be it at Garibaldi Highlands Mall or in downtown Squamish, and as such I can't support moving ahead with this."
Coun. Greg Gardner agreed.
"I feel compelled to accept staff's recommendation to not approve this amendment to the OCP as well as the rezoning, and I don't see any reasons why we would proceed further with that," he said.
Only Coun. Jeff McKenzie opposed staff's motion to reject the OCP amendment."I hardly ever go against staff recommendations but I thought it was important this time," said McKenzie. "It's a developer that has come to our town, it's new stores, it makes us a destination shopping area, it makes us a commercial centre for the corridor, and it makes us a destination for bigger stores like Old Navy and Chapters.
"They were willing to cooperate with us and go for larger stores, but nobody else wanted to work with them toward a compromise."
Staff's issue with the proposal was the fact it did not comply with the OCP.
"We feel that this development will go against the principles that council has laid out for what they want this piece of land used for," said Cameron Chalmers of the municipal planning department.
The development area is zoned as C-9 and under that designation commercial buildings cannot be less than 30,000 square feet, although each building could be subdivided into three 10,000 square feet tenancies.
"Under this proposal some are as small as 1,200 square feet," said Chalmers.
Parallax spokesperson Anne Languedoc contended, however, that the development group was willing to work with the district on issues of tenancy size.
"We were hoping that council would allow us to work with the stakeholders and planning to work collectively towards a compromise," said Languedoc. "Other groups, including staff, had clearly indicated there was a willingness to cooperate with us. Unfortunately we didn't get that from council."
"I'm unsure of where we will go from here. I can tell you, this is a $28-million development project, and we really felt what we were proposing would add significant product availability to the community," said Languedoc.
The project was intended to house international and national chain retailers, giving corridor residents greater incentive to spend their money locally, said Languedoc.
"The fact remains that there is 40 million worth of outflow dollars in our community; we need to stop the financial bleeding of this community."
