Sechelt council effectively killed SSC Properties’ ambitious village concept for East Porpoise Bay last week by voting 6-1 against first reading of a zoning amendment bylaw. While pronouncing the application dead, SSC development manager Todd McGowan made a valid point.
Two years ago, in April 2016, the same council voted unanimously to give the zoning amendment first reading, so that it could go to public hearing and the process could continue from there. So, what happened?
At the time, the proponents were required to undertake a new traffic impact study and a landslide analysis. Then, they were told, the project could go to public hearing.
Four months later, in August, SSC said the studies had been done but the district’s planning director of the day said they weren’t fully completed. Late September, he said, was the soonest a public hearing could be scheduled. Mayor Bruce Milne said that was a reasonable timeline.
In late September, there was a big kerfuffle over building height. Some councillors were shocked to learn that their April bylaw set the allowable height for at least two buildings in the development at eight storeys. They thought it was six storeys. As it turned out, the bylaw did identify eight, but the report from staff had incorrectly said six. A bylaw amendment was passed with this and some more minor changes, but Milne said scheduling a public hearing at that point was “a bad idea” because the required studies were still incomplete. “There’s work that the proponent needs to do that will complete those reports and as soon as that’s done we can move it to public hearing,” he said.
In October, council voted unanimously to rescind first reading of April’s zoning amendment. This was ostensibly to remove confusion about the project. Staff was expected to report back with a new recommendation for first reading and a correct appendix list of conditions. “There actually are sincere apologies for how long this has been twisting and turning,” Milne said.
Another year and a half passed. Meanwhile, SSC was pitching affordable housing, complaining about delays, paying for a planner to advance the project, and pushing, always pushing for a public hearing that never happened. And apparently won’t happen on this council’s watch.
“Any information they’ve requested from SSC, we’ve given to them,” McGowan said.
In giving his reasons for rejecting first reading last week, Milne had travelled a great distance from wanting a couple of relatively mundane technical studies before going to public hearing. Now it was a matter of defending the OCP and Downtown First vision of Sechelt; its values, its future, its very soul were apparently at stake.
At least we have the mayor’s assurance – nay, insistence – that there was nothing political about how all this was handled. That comes as a tremendous relief.
