Some in the public might say that the Garibaldi Estates Neighbourhood Plan isn’t ready yet, but Squamish council is ready to get on with it.
After a public hearing at Brennan Park Recreation Centre on May 27, which saw residents express their fears and dislikes of the plan, councillors voted 6-1 in favour of giving the final reading to the blueprints for the future of the neighbourhood.
With approximately 40 people in attendance, residents said that the plan in its current form would only be adding more problems to an already problematic area.
Resident concerns
One of the biggest issues of the night was traffic and how a potential 2,000 additional residents could escalate this.
“Wait times trying to get onto the highway now are already frustrating at times and on the weekend, it gets even worse trying to get in and out of Garibaldi Village. If you want to start adding 1,000 to 2,000 people with vehicles … That's just going to create a huge mess,” one local said.
Another resident said that if transportation along the highway weren’t planned properly, it would be an expensive problem for future town leaders.
“If you don’t plan for your transportation corridors for the exponential growth that's taking place here … then there’s going to have to be some very expensive expropriation to accommodate it, even if everybody is on a bike,” they said.
“Planning is for the future to eliminate problems, and that hasn't been done here, I don't think.
So, if you do it, do it right. Don’t give the burden of the cost down the road to some other council because it's out of your term.”
Wrapping up the vehicle concerns were public comments on parking, or the lack thereof.
“Please stop allowing parking variances in any neighbourhoods because the plans are there for a reason, and it's hurting the traffic and livability of the town,” one speaker said.
Other residents said they were disappointed with the lack of care around tree protection and the character of the neighbourhood, and with District staff recommending the plan despite residents voicing general dislike of the draft.
“If there's one thing that this process has succeeded in, it's making people lose faith in the value of public engagement,” a resident said.
Speaking in support was a woman whose mother has lived in Garibaldi Estates for 35 years and hoped the plan would allow for more affordable housing in the future for her children.
“It's my opinion that it's one of the loveliest spots to live in Squamish. So, I do understand the desire of many residents of that area to not see densification,” she said.
“However, I have teenagers and I hope that someday they will get to live in Squamish as adults … with the way housing affordability is, that’s not going to happen.”
Mostly, locals said they felt “ignored” and that their opinions didn’t matter.
“It's very frustrating to see our way of life pushed aside,” one resident said.
A brief history
The Garibaldi Estates Neighbourhood planning process started back in 2021, and is part of the municipality's ongoing efforts to create blueprints for future development in each major neighbourhood in Squamish.
The plan includes: the increase of residential densification between Mamquam Road and Diamond Road, employment and services in multi-storey buildings within Garibaldi Village and throughout the neighbourhood as accessory commercial units, and additional public open spaces.
From the start of the process years ago, some residents in the area have vigorously objected to the proposed plan to densify the area.
The District’s own engagement on the project showed this clearly.
“A majority of participants in Stage 3 feel the neighbourhood should remain at its current density or see a limited increase in the future. Participants expressed mistrust in the planning process and feel that the proposed scenarios do not reflect input the neighbourhood has provided in earlier stages,” reads the District’s engagement summary from back in 2023.
“Participants believe development will have negative impacts on issues such as neighbourhood character, environmental values, transportation, parking, infrastructure, and amenities.”
A court case regarding a proposed fourplex in Garibaldi Estates remains before B.C.'s Supreme Court after neighbours filed legal objections
Council comments
It was an almost unanimous decision to support giving the neighbourhood plan its third reading, with only Coun. Lauren Greenlaw opposed.
Coun. Jenna Stoner said she heard the frustrations of the community as well as their concerns, distress and most of all “the sadness.”
“I do hear that, and I hope that you hear me when I say that my support for this isn’t intended to dismiss your concerns tonight or those that have been written in,” she said.
“It’s not a perfect plan, I will admit to that. It has a lot of tradeoffs, and it does not address or represent all of the concerns that have been laid out throughout this process on both sides of the debate.”
For her, housing was one of the biggest drivers of the plan, including affordable housing, which she said would be secured using “other forms of policy.”
“We need all of the housing we can get, whether it's market, non-market, for sale, rental, co-housing, and that’s what this plan delivers, at least a vision for it,” she said.
Coun. Andrew Hamilton urged residents to think about why they live in Squamish and to use that reasoning to help justify the need for this plan.
“Change happens, and we need to plan for it. Squamish is an amazing place to live, and people have figured that out. There is an enormous demand to live in Squamish from all corners of B.C.
Those population pressures, the fact that it’s such an amazing place to live, is a double-edged sword,” he said.
“When we live here, we get to benefit from all the amazing things that we can do here in Squamish. Think about why you live here … and how many people would be grateful to have that same access. That’s what is causing this population pressure.”
Hamilton also touched on the level of detail in the plan.
“I agree this plan is not perfect, but it's a plan. We don’t control a lot of what is going to happen, because a lot is in the control of individual property owners like yourselves and developers,” he said.
“To go into the level of detail that many people might hope to see in this plan may be an exercise of futility, so I look forward to seeing this plan evolve and get better over time.”
Mayor Armand Hurford, who participated in the public hearing electronically as he was in Ottawa, said that giving the plan its third reading felt like “an appropriate” direction.
“This isn’t planning a specific development that encompasses this entire land base. We struck what I feel is an appropriate balance of level of detail for what this plan is. Which is guidance over time for the neighbourhood to evolve,” he said.
He also reminded residents that the plan could have recommended more densification due to the zoning.
“I think from an academic perspective, this area could hold a lot more than what is being proposed here,” he said on the choice of densification in the plan.
Also in support of the plan was Coun. Chris Pettingill, who addressed the issue of parking.
“This plan is not meant to address parking; it speaks to some parking minimums, but there's a whole bunch of work we have to do there, and I think we haven't handled parking well,” he said.
“We can't go planning for solutions where every resident brings many vehicles…but I think that’s a separate discussion.”
He also said that the plan wasn’t made to address just the issues residents face today, but also those that they will face in the next 10 to 25 years.
“We are trying to do some of those things that are tough today but pay off for our community in the long term,” Pettingill said.
Coun. Eric Andersen put things very directly: “There’s simply too much time invested here already; we need to move on.”
“This is taking too long and it's costing us in meeting our housing needs and targets as well,” he said.
Also on the issue of traffic and parking, he suggested that in the next process, the council ask residents why they use or own cars.
“We’re not asking that question, and until we do, we may be making planning mistakes, and we should be taking caution around that,” he said.
On the topic of feeling ignored, Coun. John French said that his colleagues did their best to understand the concerns of locals. This included reading a 1,747-page document with all of the resident public engagement on the plan.
“Inevitably, a bunch of people are going to claim that council didn’t listen and didn’t consider all the feedback, and I believe I did hear some of that this evening,” French said.
“But we did listen tonight, just as we’ve listened to the feedback and the priorities of the residents who have shared their opinions over the last four years. It's now time to end this planning process, it is decision time and I am ready to put this plan in motion.”
The only councillor to speak against the motion was Greenlaw, who acknowledged that the majority of the public feedback heard throughout the process “has not been supportive of this plan.”
“If we convert this arable land to housing, there will be no getting it back. If we destroy these wildlife corridors, this habitat for pollinators, fish and mammals, there will be no getting it back,” she said.
Council voted 6-1 in favour of giving the Garibaldi Estates Neighbourhood Plan its third reading, but opted not to adopt the bylaw on the same evening. Instead, it will return to council at a later date.
For more information on the neighbourhood plan, visit the District of Squamish website.
