A new housing development on Reef Road in Sechelt is in its early stages. A rezoning bylaw for the new building passed first reading in the District’s last council meeting.
The 49-unit townhouse structure will not be designated as ‘affordable housing’ and will be added at market rates.
Development Planning Manager with the District of Sechelt Ian Holl says they’ve been in talks with developer.
“We’ve been talking with them for a while,” Holl says. “It’s gone through a few iterations in terms of the number of townhouses and slight layout changes.”
He says the site has some environmental challenges that’re slowing development.
“It’s not a particularly large property and it’s not particularly steep, but it’s these stream and wetland areas that are really constraining where things can go because they have to meet provincial regulations,” says Holl. “So that’s been the main constraint on development into this site.”
Another challenge is the District’s Official Community Plan (OCP) which doesn’t quite allow this level of density, but that has been a problem overcome on other developments before.
“They’ll have to do a small amendment to the OCP because of the density parameters that we currently have that go slightly over the density range designated for this area,” he says. “We’ve done a bunch of those for other rezonings in the last several years, where we’re just running up against limits that were established back in 2010 that are now being found to be not sufficient.”
There’s still a long way to go for before shovels can get into the ground, as rezoning still needs to go through a second reading, third reading, and public hearing before approval.
“For this particular project, it’s one of several newer projects that’s focused on multi-family housing,” Holl says. “That’s a good thing for us in terms of creating more housing diversity.”
