Three different townhouse developments for hillsides in Britannia Beach are not going ahead, despite getting as far as third reading with the Squamish-Lillooet Regional District.
The rezoning issue came up at a recent SLRD board meeting where they hit a roadblock preventing bylaw adoption because of the provincial highway ministry.
The Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure has the final ruling authority on these plans in the regional district and Area D Director Tony Rainbow says the province would not rule until they saw the final plans.
“They made the decision that they’re not prepared to accept any more subdivisions up in that upper part of Copper Drive,” he said. “They’ve come out hard and fast now and said ‘No more.’”
There are three different applications from Vega Enterprises, Vernacular Architecture and Huan Sheng Zhong covering five sites on Copper Drive. A sticking point is the topography of the sites.
“They’re incredibly steep and timbered. If it had been flat land, I could understand, but it’s not flat,” Rainbow said.
When the official community plan (OCP) for Area D was developed, the upper lots were considered potentially suitable for multi-family homes. The different developers responded by putting in applications for small townhouse developments between April 2013 and September 2014. The sites are at 1017, 1021, 1111, 1119 and 1125 Copper Dr.
The Vega application was for 12 multi-family townhouses, Vernacular’s was for 21 bare-land strata units and Zhong’s was for 15 detached dwellings. The province’s decision provides some clarity for the regional district, Rainbow says, as the SLRD board now can amend zoning to remove the multi-family provision as an option for the sites in question.
“Those three developers have been told those lots are designated single-family and that’s it, so they won’t be able to proceed,” he says.
Staff has been directed to prepare an amendment bylaw for Area D’s OCP to re-designate the sites as single-family residential. All three development applications were received prior to Rainbow joining the SLRD board.
“I think it would have been a mistake to have that kind of density up on the hill like that, so I don’t have any argument with it at all,” Rainbow said.
As director for the electoral area, he has heard similar sentiments from people in the community, adding that residents do not want the dense multi-family developments at that location because of the steep terrain.
“It wasn’t multi-family itself they were concerned about, it was the location,” he said.
Townhouses are slated for development by MacDonald Development Corporation on that flat area at Britannia Beach North.
“People are saying ‘Oh, absolutely, that’s where they should be. That’s the place, no problem,” Rainbow said.
According to an SLRD memo, the plans for residential construction in Britannia Beach as a whole may be less ambitious than planned. There are up to 1,000 units planned by Taicheng Development Corporation for Britannia South. On the north side, there are 275 units, and if no further subdivision is planned and no mixed residential occurs on the upper part of Copper Drive, the total number of residential units will be fewer than 375. Added together, the SLRD expects there could be approximately 1,375 units at Britannia Beach, or less than the 1,650 to 2,000 units that were anticipated.
(Update: This story has been updated from the print edition with the correct name of the developer at Britannia Beach North.)
