Rescheduled Public Hearing Transcript
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TRANSCRIPT OF THE RESCHEDULED PUBLIC HEARING HELD IN THE COUNCIL CHAMBER, CITY HALL, 141 WEST 14th STREET, NORTH VANCOUVER, B.C., ON MONDAY, MAY 16, 2005 AT 7:00 P.M. PRESENT: COUNCIL MEMBERS STAFF MEMBERS Mayor B.A. Sharp A.K. Tollstam, City Manager Councillor R.C. Clark S.E. Dowey, City Clerk Councillor R.J. Fearnley J.M. Rowe, Assistant City Clerk Councillor R.N. Heywood G. Penway, Assistant City Planner Councillor B.W. Perrault F.A. Smith, Director, Community Development K. Russell, Development Planner ABSENT Councillor C.R. Keating Councillor D.R. Mussatto Re: Bylaw No. 7687 – 901 West 3rd Street – File: 3345-02 3W 901 The Rescheduled Public Hearing was called to order at 7:00 p.m. Mayor B.A. Sharp Ms. Dowey! Ms. S.E. Dowey, City Clerk Thank you Your Worship. Bylaw No. 7687 is to amend the text of CD-252 (Comprehensive Development 252 Zone) legally described as Lot 1, Resub 6, Block X, D.L. 265, Plan 11806, located at 901 West 3rd Street, by adding “retail building supply establishment” to the list of permitted uses in this zone. The applicant is Griffin Holding Corp./Michael Rosen & Associates and Council will consider this under item 6, Your Worship. Mayor Sharp Mr. Penway! Mr. G. Penway, Development Planner Thank you Your Worship. We are talking about a site which is the corner of 3rd Street and Hanes, so in this aerial photograph, you will see its on the corner of the property here. It would be the Southeast corner of the intersection at Hanes and 3rd Street. To give you a sense of context, kitty corner with the Capilano Mall and Marine Drive is here. First Street the other major arterial would be down here. Hanes coming through here. It is a site which has been zoned Industrial for many years. Our Official Community Plan is above me here to the left and it shows the site as being purple which is an Industrial designation. We are dealing with a piece of property which has an Industrial Official Community Plan designation. It has Industrial zoning historically for many decades. It would have had an Industrial M-3 zone. In 1993 it was rezoned to a site specific zone to provide for a specific use of the land and a variation on the M-3 Industrial use zoning and that is a CD-252 zone was adopted in 1993 with certain changes to the uses and development standards. It has been developed and been used that way since 1993. The users of the land have now relocated to the Harbourside Business Park and so the land has been acquired and the intention is to use it for a use category which was permitted in the M-3 zone and is currently still allowed for the M-3 zone but is no longer listed in the site specific zone put under this property back in 1993. The board which is up to my right here shows the context as well and this gives you a sense of the remnants of M-3 zoning in the area which would be from McKay to the west and over east of Fell to the east. Here you see First Street through here and you see Marine Drive here and Third Street here. So this is the site. So at one time virtually all of these lands would have had an M-3 zone. Over a number of years they have been individual site specific rezoning which have gone on and one of them occurred for this CD-252 zone. The M-3 zone still allows for what’s called a retail building supply establishment which is a use which provides for, effectively, umber yards and building supply establishments. The application before us tonight is to bring back the potential for that retail building supply use within the CD-252 zone. It would keep the same building and standards for building but amongst the list of uses would be returned to that property, a retail building supply establishment. The applicants are here to speak to the application, Your Worship. Mayor Sharp Thank you. Mr. Michael Rosen, Michael Rosen & Associates Thank you, Madame Mayor, and members of Council. My name is Michael Rosen. I’m a planning consultant. I introduce you David Laniado who is the President and CEO of The Finishing Touch. David is going to talk a little about his operations; why he has come to the City to establish operation; a little bit about what process we followed over the last couple of months; and the David will turn it back to me and I’ll speak to a couple of issues with respect to planning items that have come up. City of North Vancouver Page 2 of 21 Rescheduled Public Hearing Bylaw No. 7687 May 16, 2005 re 901 West 3rd Street Griffin Holding Corp./ Michael Rosen & Assoc. Mr. David Laniado, President, The Finishing Touch We have been looking for a location on the North Shore for about fifteen years. It is very tough to find a location. Late last year we found this building. It wasn’t the ideal building in that it had a tremendous amount of office. It was occupied by Sinclair Dental. After a lot of deliberation and discussion with the City and the understanding that it was at one time zoned for building materials and that staff would support that we decided we would move our head offices from Burnaby to this location. We are very excited to have a store on the North Shore. We understand some of our neighbours have raised some concerns. Basically they focus around increased competition. We don’t really see ourselves as competitive to the businesses in the area. We are a specialty ………….. shop. In fact, when I renovated my house one the North Shore last year I spent quite a lot of money at Dick’s Lumber. When Dick Alexander built his house he spent quite a lot of money at our store. Not as much, I might add. Basically, the concerns that were raised were traffic. You have before you my letter. I really am quite amazed and taken aback and quite frankly, flattered, that such substantial companies, who we have a great amount of respect for, are concerned that The Finishing Touch, which is essentially a very small family owned business, increasing traffic. Michael is going to address the parking which is really something that falls into the Bylaw. We have to have parking as per whatever the requirements are, but in terms of increased traffic and driveway lanes, we have to honour the rules of the City and we fully intend to so and we’re very excited to bring a store to the North Shore. We have a lot of North Shore customers who have to travel to Burnaby who are very pleased that we will be on the North Shore. We are very excited to have our head office here. We will be bringing quite a few of our staff and several of them are already looking for homes on the North Shore. We are keen to open our store. Thank you. Mayor Sharp Thank you. Mr. Rosen I was going to add a few comments, if that’s OK? A couple of things; first of all David failed to mentioned that we have been aware of the concerns that have been raised by Dick’s for a few weeks now. This is a Rescheduled Public Hearing that when the first one was about to transpire we were made aware by Dick’s, they called us directly, of their concerns. We are hoping to talk to them and see what their concerns were in a little bit more detail. See if there is some ways we can manage the concerns. Unfortunately we never had that kind of dialogue any further. With respect to Rona, the issues that have been raised by Rona, we were made of today when I got the letter from the City Clerk’s office of Rona’s concerns. We hadn’t been approached by Rona to dialogue with them about the issues. City of North Vancouver Page 3 of 21 Rescheduled Public Hearing Bylaw No. 7687 May 16, 2005 re 901 West 3rd Street Griffin Holding Corp./ Michael Rosen & Assoc. You know, as a Planner I know that it is in the interest of ourselves and our Council to have this Public Hearing as soon as possible and have issues not surfacing. Unfortunately, there hasn’t been a dialogue to try to resolve the issues so we want to make the point that we have talked to both Rona and Dick’s. Parking, we do understand, is an issue that has been raised by, particularly, Dick’s. The concern, that I understand, is that they believe that their parking lot will be used by customers of The Finish Touch and clog up their parking, take up their parking. I can understand that. It can happen because, you know, when people go shopping, when there are stores right next to each other, you park in one, you walk to the other. So, I understand that issue. What we did, at least to demonstrate to Council, that we have enough parking on our site. Not only do we have enough parking, we have more than enough parking. We have excess parking. Based upon the size of our building, the parking requirements in your Zoning Bylaw, we calculate that we would need 38 parking spaces. Well, we have 53 parking spaces.