Rescheduled Public Hearing Transcript

TRANSCRIPT OF THE RESCHEDULED PUBLIC HEARING HELD IN

THE COUNCIL CHAMBER, CITY HALL, 141 WEST 14^thSTREET,

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 Councillor R.J. Fearnley Councillor R.N. Heywood Councillor B.W. Perrault
S.E. Dowey, City Clerk J.M. Rowe, Assistant City Clerk G. Penway, Assistant City Planner 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 3^rdStreet – 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

and Council will consider this under item

Holding Corp./Michael Rosen & Associates

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 3^rdStreet 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 3^rdStreet. 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 Bylaw No. 7687

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Rescheduled Public Hearing
May 16, 2005 re 901 West 3^rdStreet 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.

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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. It’s important to know that we have that excess based upon the Bylaw. Will there still be parking problems at peak times? There could be! But, I wanted to demonstrate to Council and to, in fact, our neighbours, that we do have sufficient parking on our site to meet our needs.

Lastly, you know, there is all kinds of examples around the Lower Mainland where there are like businesses that locate together, businesses that are, in fact, competitors. But because they become such a draw, the businesses like being close to each other because the area becomes a kind of a magnet. It becomes identified as an area to go shop. In this case for home improvement goods. We think it’s actually beneficial, for not only ourselves, but our fellow colleagues down the street, that if we were in this location, it’s just drawing more people to the area. More people who are looking to spend money on home improvement things. So we don’t see this as a competitive thing. As David said, I think their businesses overlap 5 or 10 percent. This is a complimentary business and from a planning point of view, given where the site is, given the context of the surrounding uses, and Gary has spoken to this already, we think it’s an appropriate land use for this site. So, Madame Mayor, we will stop there. If you will, after the other people have spoken we may want to get up and address some of the issues that have been raised. Thank you very much.

Mr. Laniado

I want to clarify one point. We did speak with representatives of Dick’s. I just got this letter from Rona today. I left a message for Bruce Allan but he had left for the day so we have not actually spoken to the Rona people.

Mayor Sharp

I am going to ask for members of the Public. The first one I have is Andy Hiscox! Please state your name and address for the record.

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Mr. Andy Hiscox, City Spaces Consulting, 910 – 688 West Hastings, Vancouver

My name is Andy Hiscox. Do you want my work address? My address is Suite 910 – 688 West Hastings. I’m with City Spaces Consulting and we are land planning consulting firm representing Dick’s Lumber. I wanted to ask your indulgence. The next three speakers after me are all from Dick’s Lumber and we weren’t quite sure whether we could make one full presentation or whether we had to go individually but we would prefer to do one full presentation to you. I have David Alexander who is one of the owners of Dick’s Lumber, Brian Chung who is the Corporate Controller, and Ian Hansen who is the Store Manager. Is that possible and take questions at the end?

Mayor Sharp

I’m not sure what you’re asking here. You are up here now as a person on the Speaker’s List at a Public Hearing to speak about this proposal so please proceed.

Mr. Hiscox

Can we maybe do a full presentation of all the next speakers who are representing Dick’s Lumber?

Mayor Sharp

I don’t know what you mean by full presentation.

Mr. Hiscox

We would like to speak one after the other.

Mayor Sharp

Well, you are on the list.

Mr. Hiscox

I am going to ask David Alexander to speak first.

Mr. David Alexander, 1575 Edgewater Lane, North Vancouver

Good evening Your Worship. My name is David Alexander. I am one of the owners of Dick’s Lumber and Building Supplies. We are a family owned and operated company on the North Shore with two locations in Burnaby and in Surrey. About ten years ago we came to the North Shore looking for a site to open a new Dick’s Lumber location and we found it very, very difficult to find the right location with the right size, the right access for large trucks, for going in and out of. The right zoning. But, three years ago Hollyburn Lumber, which was going bankrupt at that time, we had an opportunity to buy the land there. We went to the City to find out whether or not the zoning was correct and to get their approval to put a new Dick’s Lumber store on the same property. We got the approval. With that done we went and looked at the competition in the area and all the property in the immediate area that was zoned M-3. We then knew where we could expand our business should the need arise or where a possible competitor could go in.

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Our knowledge at that time was that the CD zones around was specifically did not permit retail sales of building supplies helped us with making our decision to purchase this property. You’ll have to excuse me a little bit, I’m a little bit nervous here, in this situation. After analyzing all of that we went out and we did buy it. We spent $4million dollars to buy the land which we though was extremely expensive. That was the only piece we could find. We spent another $1½ million dollars for upgrades and landscaping and renovations. We were strategic in our upgrades that made the site more operational efficient, such as upgrading the parking off of Hanes for our customers, staff parking at the lane and all deliveries are made on site and are not parked on the public streets or lanes. The physical upgrades also meant that we esthetically fit in with the evolving light-industrial office Park image of the area and I think we’ve done a great job of this. We now employ 52 people in this location; 34 of which live on the North Shore. We contribute and support local schools, sports teams, charities, local Police Departments, Fire Halls, and anybody else who basically phones us. We believe we have been operating as a very good corporate citizen it the City of North Vancouver. We believe that approving this rezoning adjacent to us intervenes in a fair, competitive market by giving a free benefit to a competitor who can take advantage of what we have created and earned in this area. We play by the rules of the City set up and we expect our competition to do so as well. There are other zoned areas in the City that already exist for this use where anyone could locate without rezoning a site that prohibits the use. We believe that we have developed a good business strategy. We do not believe we should be penalized for all the hard work and the millions of dollars investment we have made to make this location a success and this rezoning penalizes us, we think, for that. So with that, we ask you, not to approve Bylaw 7687. Thank you very much.

Mayor Sharp

Thank you.

Mr. Alexander

I’d like to introduce Brian Shum, our Corporate Controller.

Mayor Sharp

Thank you.

Mr. Brian Shum, 2580 Gilmore Avenue, Burnaby

My role with Dick’s Lumber obviously is to look at business risk and I just want to go back at the time in May 2002 when the property was first made available to us. I had some concerns I’d like to share that with you if you wouldn’t mind. My concerns at the time when the property was available was going into a site that was previously a failed lumber yard business. There was definitely some concerns wondering how well we would do there if at all.

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As well, in our two lumber yards in Burnaby and Surrey, we shared a similar business model which we thought was successful and we think it is and moving into the North Shore it would present ourselves with an entirely different business model. The market here is more retail oriented versus a contractor experiences that we have in Burnaby and Surrey. We also look at the competition. At the time Rona was there which was a long term, long time tenant and also Home Depot so there were some concerns about how we would fight or work with the competition. As Mr. Alexander alluded too, we also made a substantial capital investment, $4million in a two acre parcel which is on the pricey side. We also had a $1.5million renovation to completely gut the building and to refurbish it the way that we wanted to have a Dick’s Lumber look and feel to it. As far as we sit today, looking back in the acquisition, we’ve learned a number of things coming over to the North Shore. We found we must continually work hard to be competitive. We must continually train our existing and our new staff. Unfortunately there isn’t a hardware and lumber University we can draw from. We must continually invest in our business and expand employment to meet servicing needs. In the past two years we have created 52 jobs with 8 to 10 jobs servicing the demand from our Finishing Department. This department stocks and sells moldings and flooring which The Finishing Touch specializes in. Although I feel we are heading in the right direction with the Hanes Avenue store has only been in operation for two years. For all intent and purposes the store is still in its infancy. We must continue to work hard and continually fine-tune our business strategy. Approving the rezoning application will create more uncertainty for our business and from my perspective a great deal of unfairness as it provides our competitor an unearned business advantage in an arena we have worked so hard to create. In light of my commentary I urge you not to approve Bylaw 7687. Thank you.

Mayor Sharp

Thank you.

Mr. Ian Hassam, 2225 East 35^thAvenue, Vancouver

Your Worship, good evening, members of the Council. My name is Ian Hassam. I am the store manager of Dick’s Lumber, the North Shore Division. From the store perspective the comments I have will be very brief. I’ve got just some visual presentation. Safety of my customers and staff is paramount in our area of operations. In the last two years, Your Worship, as we tailor our store to the North Shore demand we’ve added to our product mix doors, moldings, floorings, to complement our lumber sales and this finishing component relates to a substantial percentage of our business and our substantial investment for the store as a whole and to contribute to its success in the future. In the last two years we have been competent in that field of finishing. We wanted our North Shore customer to have an entity where Dick’s Lumber could provide framing lumber to your finishing needs. I’m glad to say our response has been wonderful from our customers. We serve them well in that particular specialized area. In the operations side of it, Your Worship, the parking and the traffic issues have always been at the forefront of our decisions.

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We have our goods delivered from the First Street entrance to our yard and the trailers and the trucks are unloaded within the confines of our yard so that we do not infringe on the actual traffic and the present position that we have with the congestion in that area. Once the trucks are unloaded within the confines of our yard, as I said, they would exit from our Hanes Avenue exit marshaled by some of our yard staff to ensure safety at all times. Minimizing and managing the already heavy congested traffic and the parking demands of the street we have not used the lane access for any unloading or loading purposes because Your Worship, it’s simply impossible. I just want to show you some visual photographs of the lane taken this last week on a daily occurrence from 6:30 a.m. till closing. I will just go quickly through the pictures here. Here is a picture where it’s facing Third Street. We have a few trucks there. Here’s our fence, our parking lot for our staff. We got van traffic and lane traffic there. Here are two semi trailers right in front of our West side of the store and I think we have another picture there. And here is another one straightforward facing Third Street again. So, presently the lane is always congested with semi trucks delivering to the Fish Plants, the Dental Centre, forcing our customer to forgo using the supplied parking in the lane and making them have to seek parking on Hanes or on a side street if our main lot is full. As well, due to the number of delivery trucks using lane access so it is extremely difficult for our staff to reach their assigned parking spaces in the rear of our store. Furthermore, Your Worship, any emergency response team such as fire, ambulance or police will not be able to access that lane in its present condition and the essence is the time to save any lives. Pedestrian traffic is a great concern right now and will remain so for a while. In closing, approximately, one third of the block is owned by Dick’s Lumber. We work to minimize our usage of the lane, Your Worship, and concerns are even greater if Brand X or additional retail space is been permitted in the area will add further burden to already highly congested traffic vying for limited available spaces.