A disgruntled developer is organizing a rally to coincide with a District of Squamish town hall meeting Tuesday (June 23), decrying what he calls unfair practices by council in voting down a zoning amendment that would've allowed his project higher density than originally proposed.
"It may be the straw that broke the back," said Skye developer Thomas Ivanore, adding that if the decision isn't reversed, the many direct employees and contractor employees will be out of work by December.
The entire three-phase project, commonly known by its first phase, Skye, borders the Squamish estuary at Main St. and Third Ave. and is zoned for 35 town houses and 234 condos.
Its third phase, Aqua, proposes 16 of those townhouses and 84 condos. Ivanore requested an amendment to eliminate all 16 townhomes in favour of 55 condos - without changing the actual floor space -for a total of 139 condos on the site.
That's because the townhouses aren't selling, said Ivanore. He said the world is going through economic changes, and those changes must be reflected in the project to make it viable.
"The condos sell," he said. "The townhouses were a combination of a mistake and the area. The downtown is still rather depressing. I had two investors in last week. We drove down Cleveland Avenue and their response to me was 'Why would you do anything here?'"
Ivanore said even lowering the houses' prices hasn't helped.
"The women who are buying with families say 'We don't want to bring our kids into the downtown environment. We'll go somewhere where it's better for our kids. Where there's not crime, there's not drugs.'"
Ivanore said that's partially the district's fault, and developers got "sold a bill of goods" when they were "enticed" into investing in Squamish by a district's downtown concept plan from 2000, which showed improvements such as adding to the neighbourhood's one and only access point.
He said 14 months ago, the development company foresaw the problem and began amending plans to turf the houses in favour of condos. Ivanore said district staff was encouraging, and led him to believe the amendments would be approved. He said he also anticipated approval because the new plan includes slightly fewer residents than the district's own concept plan proposes for the downtown.
On May 19, council turned down the amendment in a split vote that saw councillors Doug Race, , Bryan Raiser and Corinne Lonsdale against.
"One of the issues with that property is a) it's right by the estuary, and b) it's adjacent to an existing largely single-family neighbourhood," Race told The Chief today.
Workers have been emailing and phoning councillors to voice their opposition and express concern for their employment, said Ivanore, and they'll make their objection known at a district town hall meeting Tuesday (June 22) at the Eagle Eye Theatre starting at 7 p.m.
Race said council can't make zoning decisions based on construction jobs.
"I met with one of them [the workers] who was sort of a spokesperson for them," said Race. "Their worried about their jobs basically evaporating later this fall, but I've told him, 'You can't make zoning decisions based on construction jobs because the construction jobs are kind of one to two years, but the zoning improvement that they build is here 50 years.'"
Race also said the downtown concept plan should be treated solely as policy guidelines.
"Those policies, I think, are more of a maximum than a guaranteed right.
Countering Ivanore's complaints that the district's own Oceanfront proposal would see more density than he proposes, Race said the Mamquam Blind Channel area is a better fit since drivers have a practically direct link to the highway.
Heintzman said the project's density was already a concern when first approved three years ago, and the additional condos - which amounts to a 16 per cent increase in density - is not appropriate for its location.
"I was always concerned not necessarily with the density downtown, but with the density in that location, approximate to the estuary," she said. "But I felt it was a good stimulus for getting downtown going."
She said the district's recently proposed Sustainability Block (S-Block), which would see as many as nine 17-storey buildings built on the shores of the Blind Channel, is suitable because of its proposed for a brownfield site -not on greenfield such as Aqua - and the S-Block has "extremely high" sustainability initiatives and goals that Ivanore's project does not.
