Gibsons council has unanimously endorsed the recommendations from a review of how the Town handled the rezoning process for a proposed waterfront hotel/residential complex.
The George Hotel and Residences has now been granted rezoning and Official Community Plan (OCP) amendments as well as a development permit covering form and character. Council will still have to authorize other development permits and complete an agreement to transfer ownership of part of Winn Road before construction could begin.
The review, presented at the July 19 council meeting, gives a detailed timeline and cost breakdown of the George process from the filing of the application in February 2013 to the adoption of the OCP and zoning changes in October of last year.
It says the roughly $151,000 spent on things like a study of the possible economic benefits, visualizations, and peer reviews of the geotechnical and hydrogeological reports was “largely recovered from the applicant.”
But it also outlines other costs, including $21,000 to deal with freedom of information requests (of which about $6,000 was recovered through fees). Staff said they spent as much as 388 hours processing the requests and also had to respond to complaints made to provincial agencies and professional organizations.
The report concludes that the two-and-a-half years it took the application to go from filing to a final vote on zoning and OCP is not unusual for large, complex developments and that “overall staff is satisfied with the [application] review process for the George Hotel. A deliberate approach with an interdisciplinary review team and a step-by-step project management approach resulted in an orderly, thorough review process culminating in well-informed decisions by council.”
“It’s kind of like reliving a nightmare,” commented Mayor Wayne Rowe after going over the history of the controversial project. “But I do want to say that our staff, I felt, did an extraordinarily professional job. We have a very small staff and this was a huge undertaking and it’s not finished yet. I fully recognize the strain that was placed on our staff throughout this process.”
The report also pointed out some weaknesses, including the fact that because applications are “developer driven” there aren’t many ways to get the community involved in the design of the buildings.
Coun. Jeremy Valeriote said that was one of his concerns as well. “You can’t force a developer to come and discuss [design with the community], but I feel that we may have been able to make it less contentious or cut it back if that developer had been willing to engage.”
Coun. Charlene San-Jenko said, “This is new territory for Gibsons, so anything we can review and learn [is valuable].”
SanJenko went on to move the report’s three recommendations: creating “an interdisciplinary review team process for complex development applications,” drafting a formalized cost recovery mechanism for complex development applications, and updating the policies on public notification to “include a range of options to inform and engage the community for complex development applications.”
The only point of debate was whether to extend a motion adopted by council in March at the suggestion of Valeriote. It says, “That for the remainder of this council term, any new OCP amendment applications for additional height under ‘OCP Harbour Area Plan Policy 5. 1. 2’ be forwarded to council upon receipt for initial review and council direction.”
Rowe said it would be best to leave that question to future councils.
“My guess is that no director of planning is ever going to bring one forward without coming to council pretty early in the process given the experience that we’ve had,” he said.
