Northyards residents may soon have another set of new neighbours.
Council passed first and second reading of a rezoning for a nine-unit townhouse development at 1009 Aspen Rd. at its meeting Tuesday night.
A public hearing on the proposed development will be scheduled for a future council meeting.
The approximately 1,300-square-foot townhouses on 1,623 square metres at the intersection of Queens Way and Government Road require a rezoning from residential to multi-unit residential.
Recently, the Northyards neighbourhood has seen a lot of interest from developers. Two projects slated for Government Road have received council approvals: a 51-unit townhome development and a multifaceted “Breeze” development that includes 60 townhouses, 12 apartments, eight live-work units and 224 square metres of commercial space.
One issue that has to be resolved for the nine-unit proposal by developer Tyler Ovington before a public hearing is that the fire flow on Aspen Road may not be sufficient for the development.
“There’s currently 90 metres per second of fire flow available in the area,” said Torill Gillespie, development and subdivision coordinator with the District of Squamish. “Which is the minimum for multi-unit development… and it is unlikely to be sufficient for the nine townhouses.”
This means there may not be enough water immediately available from the local hydrants to adequately fight a fire at the proposed development.
The developer would need to prove to District staff the current fire flow is sufficient, Gillespie said.
Another option would be for the developer to provide the upgrades to the District’s water system to improve the fire flow, but that might be too costly for a small project like this one, Gillespie added.
A third option, is if water flow improvements are done as part of the Breeze development in the Northyards on Government Road, Gillespie said.
“This likely would also improve fire flow on Aspen Road,” she said.
In voting in support of passing the readings Coun. Doug Race said the project is “generally consistent” with the neighbourhood.
“Right next to multi-family and a bit of a transition to single family,” he said. “I can at this stage support it. I think the conditions are obviously very important, certainly the water, that is critically important and how that resolves, we will wait and see.”
