Tag: Planning

Council – Jan 26, 2026

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

Monday’s meeting featured a Public Hearing. Two actually. This is something the City doesn’t do as much anymore since the Province changed the rules and limited our ability to hold them for routine rezoning applications. These OCP and Zoning changes were not routine, however, but represented a big step forward in housing variety and affordability in the City. So Public Hearing we go.

The full Public Hearing Reports are here, and there is much more info available here about the 18 month process that got us here, which doesn’t all fit in the Agenda. In this report I will try as best I can to stick the facts, and save most of the (good and bad) politics of the meeting for my Newsletter (Subscribe here if you want to read that stuff).

Public Hearing 1: Integration of Provincial Housing Legislation
Our First Public Hearing addressed three separate Bylaws:

Official Community Plan Bylaw No. 7925, 2017, Amendment Bylaw (Provincial Housing Legislation Integration) No. 8522, 2025
This change to the Official Community Plan related to Transit Oriented Development (TOD) that creates new “Land Use Designations” within the 200m, 400m and 800m buffers around SkyTrain Stations that meet the requirements of the Province’s “Bill 47” (which I wrote about here when it came out). There is quite a bit of detail in here about how we integrated these into our existing Official Community Plan, and I am comfortable in saying this is a made in New West approach and not the one size fits all approach that some other communities have been bemoaning. The most obvious example being that this does not apply to the TOD areas around 22nd Street Skytrain station, as that area is already going through an OCP update process, and will require extra technical work to address infrastructure, transportation, community needs and consultation before we can confidently move forward. Another example is how this OCP designation interacts with the Queens Park Heritage Conservation Area, where protected heritage homes are still protected and design guidelines for non-protected properties still apply, though we are not legally permitted to restrict density if builders can find a creative way to thread that needle.

Another change included here is to assure that the OCP accommodates the need for new housing outlined in the City’s Interim Housing Needs Report. This is really just a text adjustment, as the OCP (with changes required by legislation) already provides for sufficient homes to be built in the decade ahead, we just need the OCP to spell out that math clearly.

Zoning Bylaw No. 6680, 2001, Amendment Bylaw (Non-Profit Housing Development, Phase 2) No. 8528, 2025
This change to our Zoning Bylaw would pre-zone all areas in TOD Tiers 2 and 3 (areas already designated for 8- to 12-storey buildings) to allow non-profit affordable housing of up to six stores. This is a big step to assist non-profit housing providers in getting senior government funding approved for non-market housing, as the zoning step is often a barrier to funding commitments. There will be design guidelines, Development Permits, and other authorizations required, but this could significantly accelerate the approval of new truly affordable housing in the City.

Zoning Bylaw No. 6680, 2001, Amendment Bylaw (Land Use Designation Alignments) No. 8530, 2025
Finally, there are some administrative changes to the zoning bylaw required to update the language, to assure a few slightly complicated sites are aligned with the goals of the changes above, and to allow “Public School” in the majority of residential and mixed use lands, simplifying the School Board’s process for acquiring lands and approval of new schools.

We had about 50 pieces of correspondence on this item, about equally split between supportive and opposed, and we had about 20 delegates at Council speaking to it, a small majority of them speaking in favour. Concerns raised were mostly concerns around increased population density and its impact on infrastructure planning, while supporters generally spoke of increasing housing variety, the need to address a chronic regional housing shortage, and the need to streamline affordable housing.

Public Hearing 2: Implementation of Townhouse and Affordable Housing Accelerator Fund Initiatives
Our Second Public Hearing addressed the following two Bylaws:

Official Community Plan Bylaw No. 7925, 2017, Amendment Bylaw (Townhouse Accelerator Initiative) No. 8547, 2025
This change to the Official Community Plan would designate Townhouse as an additional land use for about 900 properties in the City that are currently designated Single Family. These properties are mostly the “edges” around the TOD areas above, and some other areas where it made sense from a planning and utility servicing perspective 9modified as a result of some public consultaiton). This is previous to adoption (in an upcoming meeting) of our Small Site Multi-Unity Housing (SSMUH) policy to support the Province’s multiplex rules from Bill 44. In short, the decision was to either designate these sites Townhouse, or to wait and designate them SSMUH at the Province’s June deadline.

This Bylaw also designated non-profit affordable housing projects of up to six storeys as an approvable land use within these Townhouse areas. Unlike the Bylaw above, this is not pre-zoning for affordable housing, these sites will still need rezoning, but it does indicate that Council would consider such a rezoning if a non-profit housing provider could make a project work on these sites.

Zoning Amendment Bylaw No. 6680, 2001, Amendment Bylaw (Townhouse Zoning Update) No. 8524, 2025
This amendment to our Zoning Bylaw would pre-zone approximately 570 of the 900 Townhouse properties above for Townhouse development. This will speed up the approval process if people want to build townhouse form on these properties, allowing them to skip to the development permit process, removing some uncertainty and delay from the process. This pre-zoning is not extended to all 900 because some of the properties (based on lot size, availability of a back alley for access, etc.) are not appropriate for development as townhouse without more complicated servicing/design/access work that is best secured through rezoning.

We received about 55 pieces of correspondence on these changes, with a moderate majority opposed and we had about 27 delegates at Council speaking to it, a small majority of them speaking in opposition. Concerns raised were similarly around increased population density and its impact on infrastructure planning, though there were a number of people whose properties were directly impacted or adjacent who didn’t want townhouses near their homes for aesthetic or character of the neighbourhood reasons. The supporters mostly spoke (again) of increasing housing variety, the need to build “missing middle” housing forms between houses and towers.

In the end, Council in mostly split votes approved third reading for all bylaws. The need to meet Provincial housing requirements, and the interest in both housing variety and speeding up truly affordable housing approvals were cited as reason for support. You are better to listen to the video than read my summary of the reasons expressed by some other members of Council for opposition, but it was basically an anti-housing anti-growth message, peppered with misinformation around our infrastructure planning.

The Public Hearing feedback was indeed mixed, but the public consultation prior to the hearing was more firmly in support of the direction the Bylaws presented, including allowing infill and townhouses within Tier 2 and Tier 3 TOD areas (73% in support) and in supporting 6 storey affordable housing in the OTD areas (75%) and the Townhouse areas (63%).

To put some of the deliberating of these Bylaws in context, it is important to note that the Provincial Regulations came out in November 2023, and the City received a Federal Housing Accelerator Fund grant in February 2024 to fund our work toward meeting those requirements, and accelerating affordable housing approvals in the City. In response to this Staff developed a work plan to do the TOD and Townhouse work that was approved unanimously by this Council on May 27, 2024, and a work plan to do this Affordable Housing work was approved unanimously by this Council on June 3, 2024. I include the dates, because the motions and unanimous votes are a matter of public record, you can look this up.

On November 4, 2024 Council unanimously endorsed the approach to early and ongoing consultation, which included in the Spring of 2025 on-line consultation with a survey and an on-line Zoom information event, and a series of Community Open Houses that were well attended and outlined preferences and concerns. On October 27, 2025 Council unanimously, and item-by-item, approved the bylaws above to be prepared for readings, and on December 15, 2025 Council unanimously endorsed the detailed plan, and gave first and second readings to the Bylaws.

Everyone on Council is of course free to vote their conscience or change their mind, but I think it is fair for to ask members of Council raising serious objections to these Bylaws at 50 minutes after the 11th hour (literally and figuratively) why they did not take any of those five previous opportunities over the last two years to raise concerns to staff and Council. If they had, staff and the rest of Council could discuss those concerns, understand those concerns, maybe even make changes and seek consensus on solutions to address them. How are staff able to develop policy that meets your concerns if you have never, over 5 meetings and almost two years, raised a hint that you had any concerns? They are not mind readers. In my opinion, sitting on your hands and ignoring staff in multiple meetings over two years when they are asking for input, then telling them they did it all wrong at the end is not just bad leadership, it is disrespectful to the public service, and to the community.

And I’ll stop with the politics now and put the rest of that in the newsletter.

After the Public Hearing Bylaws were approved, we had one more piece of business which was a Bylaw for Adoption:

Development Cost Charges Police Reserve Fund Establishment Bylaw No. 8570, 2025
This Bylaw that establishes a reserve fund for Police infrastructure that will be funded through development cost charges (and is one small part of the answer to the questions “Are we planning for infrastructure growth? How are we going to pay for it?” was adopted unanimously by Counicl.

And with that we were adjourned a few minutes before midnight.

Our City Our Homes (Non-market, etc.)

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

As I mentioned when I started this series on our OCP updates, the provincial legislation we are trying to catch up to is almost exclusively about market housing. This means it is working to accelerate the approval and development of primarily strata ownership and purpose-built market rental – the houses over on the right side of the housing spectrum:

In New Westminster in 2025, that means houses that will sell for $1.5 Million, townhouses that will likely be $1 Million, apartments that will be over $700,000 if they are large enough for a bedroom and rents in new market units are not affordable to the average working person.

To be clear: as a City and as a region, we need this market housing despite its apparent unaffordability. much of our current housing affordability crisis is a supply issue – there are simply more people moving to this region than we are building housing for – and cutting off new supply of housing won’t make that better. The last Housing Needs Report we did in New West showed the need for almost 5,000 market ownership and market rental units in the next 5 years. However, the same report showed that we need 2,700 non-market (shelter, supportive, and non-market rental) affordable homes over the same period:

And in reporting out to the Province on our Housing Target Orders, we see that New Westminster is meeting its targets, except in the mon-market part of the spectrum:

The province has introduced more Inclusionary Zoning support, which provides incentives to the market housing sector to build a few affordable housing units with new market buildings. This is a useful tool, but the scale of need is disconnected from what inclusionary zoning can actually supply. The City’s own analysis suggests that asking the development community to build 10% affordable rental units along with market strata may make most market projects unviable. If we ask for more than 10%, we end up with neither the market or non-market need addressed, if we ask for less than 50%, then we need to find another way to get non-market built.

That way, of course, is for the Federal (and to a lesser extent Provincial) Government to invest directly in building affordable housing, at the scale of tens of thousands of units a year like they did from the early 1960s until Paul Martin’s disastrous 1993 austerity budget that got the feds out of the business of affordable housing. Smaller Local Governments don’t have the finances (or the mandate for that matter) to build affordable housing at the scale needed. What we can do is make it easier for the governments with deeper pockets to get the housing built. Pre-approving projects, saying “yes” without creating unnecessary hurdles when projects come to us, providing grant support to reduce the cost of City permits or utility connections, investing our own city-owned land where possible to support affordable housing projects, and actively lobbying the Province and BC Housing for more investment.

The City of New Westminster is already doing all of these things.

We have an Affordable Housing Capital Reserve Fund to provide strategic support and reduce development cost for non-profit builders, we have said “yes” to all of the non-market affordable housing projects brought to Council in my time at the table, and we have amended our Zoning Bylaw to pre-zone areas in the City for secured non-market affordable housing up to six storeys. Now we are taking this the next step to open up more areas of the City for 6-storey secured non-market housing.

In the amendments before Council now  we would allow non-profit affordable rental housing of up to six storeys to be built on sites designated in the OCP for Residential Townhouses, and anywhere in Tiers 2 and 3 of the designated Transit Oriented Development area (that is, anywhere within 800m of a SkyTrain Station). Overall, this would mean the majority of lots in New West would be effectively pre-zoned for affordable housing projects like Móytel Lalém, taking a significant planning risk out of the way of non-profit housing providers, and making it easier for them to apply to senior governments for the funding, as that funding is often tied to meeting zoning requirements.

There are also several other smaller changes Staff is proposing to make during the OCP update, some needed to clean up all the small changes and make it a more cohesive plan and map, some to meet other City polices that make sense to formalize at this time. This includes designating “public schools” as a permitted use in the majority of residential and mixed use areas to speed up approval process for new schools when the Province and School District identify new school locations. It is also proposed to update our Frequent Transit Development Areas map to better reflect Provincial legislation and recent updates in the Regional Growth Strategy.

Other changes seem a little more technocratic, but are appropriate at this time. We are integrating the results of our most recent Housing Needs Report into the OCP, to make clear that the OCP provides sufficient planned capacity to accommodate the housing need identified in that report. We are also integrating Climate Action strategies and targets into our OCP (as the Local Government Act now requires). Finally, staff have drafted a new Regional Context Statement to integrate our OCP with the Regional Growth Strategy, which if approved by Council will then go to the Metro Vancouver board for approval.

All told, this is a big piece of planning work that includes not just the City’s planning staff, but engineering and other departments have provided technical background and support, all resulting in the policy and bylaws that back up this map. There has been quite a bit of public engagement that gave some clear feedback on some items and some mixed opinions on others, and all of this will end up in front of Council, then to a Public Hearing, which will no doubt be a big topic of discussion in the fall. If you have opinions, be sure to let us know!

Our City Our Homes (Missing Middle)

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. 1 Comment.

I started last post talking about specific changes the City is looking at to comply with Provincial housing regulation and our Housing Accelerator Fund commitments to the federal government. This post covers housing changes outside of the Transit Oriented Development areas.

*note, there are some terms I’m going to use here that may not align with how everyone else uses them, so the clarify: “townhouse” is a multi-family ground-oriented, usually multi-story development form where the homes are part of a strata; “rowhome” is a similar model, but with each unit a fee simple property without strata, only sharing a firewall with neighbours; “infill” means increasing density while maintaining the integrity of the single family lot through accessory buildings (laneway/carriage homes) or converting houses to multiplexes).

New West has always struggled to bring in enough townhouse & rowhome development, except for the Queensborough where this form has been very successful and popular in relatively greenfield development. Even during the 2017 OCP work, it was this so-called “missing middle” that got a lot of emphasis, especially from young families who saw it as an affordable transition from too-small apartments to higher-cost-and-hassle detached home. Alas, it was about the same time as that OCP was being approved in 2017 that the increase in local land values reached a point where the economics of land assembly for townhouse forms became marginal, resulting in only a few notable developments this side of the North Arm.

One surely-unintended consequence of the Provincial TOD area regulations is that the broad 800-m circles drawn around transit stations encompass many areas the City’s current OCP designated for Townhouse/Rowhouse development. The province effectively “upzoned” past what the City was intending (which, to be clear, was the goal all along) but as a result, we need to re-imagine where in our housing mix we can include this “missing middle” if we want to see it built in the City at all.

The “neighbourhood character” gambit gets the bulk of attention here, but this distracts from the real technical and engineering aspects of these seemingly small density increases. We have to assure the City’s ability to service this higher density form through sewer, water, electrical and transportation upgrades prior to approving its being built, but these small projects are not large enough to pay for those offsite upgrades. Another challenge is road access: if we want walkable safe neighbourhoods, Townhouses work better with access form lanes than from main roads and not 20 individual driveways crossing sidewalks.

To these ends and to plan infrastructure upgrades, staff are suggesting we expand townhouse areas in our OCP, pre-zone some areas for townhouse to streamline planning and implementation, and we update our design guidelines to make townhouse form more viable for development in the current market in those areas where we pre-zone for it. The locations where Townhouses might work best went through public consultation, and generally the public reaction was to open up more Townhouse area rather than less, resulting in the following DRAFT map for Council consideration:

Two big questions in the Townhouse program that Council will need to grapple with are whether to permit secondary suites in townhouses, and how much parking to require; and these questions are related because both take up space and impact the cost and therefore viability of townhouse projects.

Secondary suites were generally supported in the public consultation, because they provide more housing options (including better opportunities for intergenerational living), make mortgages more affordable for some, add to the (unsecured) rental market, while reducing the likelihood that illegal rental suites will be created that don’t meet building code standards.

A challenge is if we permit secondary suites is the pressure they may put on street parking unless we include more parking requirements with new townhouses, which in itself makes secondary suites harder to integrate into townhouses and pushes up cost. So staff are asking Council to consider if secondary suites are desired, and if so, how much parking should we require for them? Housing vs. Parking rears its ugly head again, and I’m sure this will be the source of continued debate even after the OCP updates are completed.

The province introduced Bill 44 to require cities to permit multiplexes where single family homes are only permitted now: six-plexes near frequent transit and four-plexes everywhere else. The planning term used here was “SSMUH” (pronounced SMOO) for Small Scale Multi-Unit Housing. This is a place where the City struggled early on to read how the legislation applied in our complex zoning code, and with managing some local engineering challenges related to this form of infill development. As a result, we received permission from the Province to delay SSMUH implementation in Queensborough for a couple of years because most existing development is already higher density, and in the remaining areas rapid SSMUH implementation presented some water and sewer supply issues that simply needed more engineering work. So everything below applies only to the mainland.

Back in May and June of 2024, Council unanimously supported a Bylaw amendment that rezoned about 160 properties to permit four units per lot, but for the bulk of properties in the City, agreed to delay until Staff had an opportunity to do more work on making the provincial guidelines fit into our engineering and planning context, including doing some architectural and proforma (economic viability) analysis here in New West. There has also been quite a bit of industry and public consultation over the last year to help frame the technical work done.

The step now is to amend the Official Community Plan to introduce a new land use designation called “RGO – Residential Ground Oriented Infill” that will align the mainland single detached properties  outside of the TOD or Townhouse areas with provincial SSMUH requirements. If Council approves this, the next step would be the creation of development permit guidelines and zoning regulations to inform the shape and character of multiplexes within those neighbourhoods. We hope to have that work completed by June 2026, but until then, if applicant wishes to bring a SSMUH project forward in a property within the RGO designated area, they would still be required to complete a rezoning but would not require the OCP update step of the planning process.

There are a few more details we are working on to meet our housing needs and HAF commitments that are not specifically in response to TOD and SSMUH, and I’ll cover those next post.

Our City Our Homes (TOD)

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

The first part of our OCP update work right now is to update our approach to Transit Oriented Development areas – the residential areas within 800m of a SkyTrain Station that, through Bill 47, the province is prescribing higher density. There are details in how density is distributed with prescribed minimum Floor Space Ratios, but for most folks it is easier to envision building heights. Within 200m of a Sky Train Station (red circles below), heights up to 20 storeys will be prescribed. Within 400m (yellow circles), the minimum is 12 storeys, and within 800m (the green circles), buildings up to 8 storeys will be pre-approved.

In effect, the province is saying the local government cannot refuse this level of residential density for density reasons alone, and cannot require off-street parking to be built for new residential density in these zones. This does not restrict the City from permitting more density than these minimums (we already permit more than 20 stories in our downtown core), nor does it limit our ability to approve projects that have less density than these prescribed amounts.

This is your regular reminder that Land Use Designation is different than Zoning. The former is a higher-level description of types of land use (residential commercial, industrial, etc.) and height and density in general terms (single detached, townhouse, high rise, etc). Zoning is more detailed in not only being more specific in types of use, but also addresses “form and character” like lot sizes, setbacks and specific dimensions and density of buildings. Any change to zoning must be must be consistent with the land use designation in the Official Community Plan (OCP), or the OCP must be amended prior to changing zoning. Our task right now is to amend our OCP Land Use Designations to align with Bill 47 so that new buildings can be zoned to the new density levels designated by the province. Clear as mud?

Back on May and June of 2024, Council workshopped then unanimously approved changes to our Zoning Bylaw that integrated the TOD area maps, and at the same time required that buildings meeting the Provincial mandated density must be 100% secured market or non-market rental (as opposed to market strata), removed the parking requirements, and removed caretaker suites as a zoning-permitted use in some commercial and industrial areas to prevent Bill 47 from becoming a tool to re-purpose commercial and industrial land for housing.

Now to continue to meet provincial regulatory requirements we need to update our OCP so buildings that meet Bill 47 density don’t require OCP amendments for approval, and we need to do this by the end of the year (there are procedural steps between third reading and adoption of OCP update bylaws that take a couple of months, so September third reading = January adoption). The intent of staff is to bring in OCP amendments that not only meet the letter of the law, but also meet the spirit of the legislation while assuring (as best we can) integration of the existing OCP adjacent to the TOD areas.

So staff have drafted a bylaw that enables buildings of up to eight, twelve and twenty storeys in the appropriate TOD areas, and still maintains a higher land use designation and mixed use entitlements if those are already included in the existing OCP. There are also some changes to two specific areas – the existing “Commercial and Health Care” area around RCH and the “Commercial Waterfront” area around the Quay – to clarify that residential is a permitted use in these area as ancillary to commercial use. We are also suggesting that the caretaker unit designation for industrial and commercial zones lands be removed (meaning the owner, if they want to put in a new caretaker suite, would need to come and ask for an OCP amendment).

There is a specific issue related to the TOD area around 22nd Street Station. The Provincial legislation came in at a time when we are deep into the visioning process for 22nd Street area. We have done a tonne of public consultation and planning around this area, and it is clear that we have more work to do towards planning the infrastructure needed to support a much denser neighbourhood, from water and sewer to understanding transportation changes and assuring we are preserving adequate green and public space. So staff are recommending we creating three study areas (22A is below the SkyTrain Station, 22B comprises most of the single family areas of Connaught Heights, and 22 C is the strip along 20th Street) to support the technical and financing growth strategy work we need to envision a complete neighbourhood:

The circles created by the 800m buffers around Skytrain don’t align well with the square nature of our existing street grid, resulting in a few anomalies where smaller density will be adjacent to much larger density within the same block, or such. Staff have made some recommendations around how to address these “edge properties”, mostly by slightly expanding the TOD areas across a few strategic lots to make it blend better. This was a subject of some of the Public Consultation that occurred over the last year, and adjustments have been made based on that feedback:

However, perhaps the biggest question before Council when it comes to TOD implementation is whether we allow ground-oriented infill density (e.g. fourplex or sixplex) within the TOD areas. There are large areas of primarily single family detached homes (Lower Sapperton and the West End are the best examples) where the TOD areas mean we must permit 8 storey apartment buildings where there are single family homes now. If we also permit fourplexes to be built in those areas, it would potentially increase housing variety, but may reduce the incentive for multiple properties to be consolidated for the higher density the TOD areas envision. Not allowing infill housing in the TOD area would effectively protect land for higher density development, and townhouses would be the lowest density land use permitted, which might slow development while it brings higher density.

The community consultation favoured including infill density in these areas, but it will be up to Council to determine if we want to see slower development of higher density, or more housing mix with (likely) a higher chance that infill happens sooner.

In my next post, we’ll talk about what all of this means for Townhouses and Rowhomes in the City.

Our City Our Homes (Intro)

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

The City of New West is facing the same housing pressures as every other City in the region, and as most large urban areas in Canada: not enough housing to meet increasing demand, housing priced out of reach of most working people, inadequate rental housing supply, and a paucity of supportive and transitional housing to lift people out of homelessness. Looking back at my own words from seven years ago, I can confidently say we have made some progress here in New West, but the scale of the regional problem has expanded faster than our response.

Over the last year or two, we have seen more action from senior governments, mostly directed at the market housing end of the Housing Spectrum, and directed at getting housing approved faster, presuming that local governments not approving housing is the main challenge we need to address.

Of course, New Westminster has met its Housing Orders targets and exceeded its Regional Growth Strategy estimates for new market and rental housing need. We have approved every unit of supportive and affordable housing that has come across the Council table. At the same time we are falling far short of our Housing Needs for affordable and supportive housing, and our unsheltered homeless numbers are going up. I’m no more an economist than Patrick Condon, but this suggests to me that serious investment in transitional and supportive housing from senior governments is what is needed to bring housing security to all residents, not what they are currently offering:

So while we work on getting more investment in non-market housing, we are also doing the work that senior governments demand of us to assure our housing policies, Official Community Plan, and permitting processes are updated to support housing growth concomitant with regional population growth.

Back in June, staff brought to Council a set of proposed Official Community Plan changes that, when taken together, assure the City is meeting both the letter and the spirit of the Provincial housing legislation changes (remember bills 44, 46, and 47?) in a way that fits our local context and addresses our local housing need, and at the same time addresses the various initiatives around infill density, family-friendly housing, and affordable housing under our Housing Accelerator Fund commitment to the federal government. This is bringing to culmination a big body of work that included Public consultation framed under “Our City Our Homes” that has been going on for about a year now.

The implementation of this work (and adoption of the OCP changes) has been delayed a bit by some weirdly technical procedural issues (some of which I talked about in my last Newsletter but wont unpack again, subscribe here). This means the timeline Council unanimously agreed to last November will be a bit delayed, and the OCP updates won’t be considered until early in the fall. This gives a bit more time to unpack some of the work that was presented back in June. The final reports when they come back to us in September might be structured differently to address those procedural issues, but the intent is to ask Council to consider the questions raised in the June report.

Over the next week or two, I will write some more posts here that go through the sections of that report, hoping folks can better understand the City’s approach to the new legislation when consideration of the OCP update happens. There are some details in here Council will need to consider, and I cannot predict where those discussions will land, nor am I taking a position on where they should land. On some issues the public consultation has provided a pretty clear idea which way the community thinks the City should go, on others the feedback is less clear, but staff have strong technical recommendations. Ultimately, these details are a discussion for Council and going into them with an open mind, it will be fascinating to see where we land.

Anecdotes and Data

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

I don’t usually dip into media criticism here – there is an old saying about politicians not pissing off people who buy ink by the barrel – but every once in a while an article comes out that needs a response.

In this case, a predictable Douglas Todd article mentions New West. For those who don’t know him, Todd is Post Media’s go-to guy for anti-immigration and anti-urbanism opinion. As in this article, he often taps Patrick Condon, a UBC Landscape Architect who feigns “housing expert” status by pining for Vancouver’s pastoral past.

The reason I highlight this story is that I wanted to test the central premise – that increased growth and increased density means increased taxes. Todd is an opinion writer, not a journalist, because a journalist would do a bit of research to test their idea against data, while an opinion writer is comfortable relying on anecdotes that fit the narrative he is trying to craft.

I’m not a journalist, but I do love data. So I dug through news articles and budget documents from 20 Lower Mainland municipalities (all but Anmore – because their data was hard to find, and after a bit of digging, I decided meh Anmore) to determine what their tax rate increases have been over the last three years, since the beginning of this council term. I do this all the time anyway because I see it as part of my job. I really should know where we stand in comparison to other cities, even if I am the first to acknowledge, it isn’t a competition. I also took the short term rate of growth data from the Metro Vancouver Population Projections report for 2024. Plot the two against each other, and this is what you get:

I don’t want to get all Stats 101 on you (the R-squared here is 0.07), but that distribution is pretty close to a circle, meaning there is no correlation between rate of growth and tax increases. The highest tax rate increases over on the right in red (Bowen Island, Langley City and Surrey) are cities pretty close to the middle in growth-wise and the three fastest growing cities up top in green (New West, North Van City, and Langley Township) are mid-to-low in tax rate increase.

Another common Todd/Condon argument is that density of population leads to tax increases. Data on population density is easy to find, so here goes plot number 2:

Again, the cluster of four highest-density cities up top (Vancouver, New West, White Rock, and North Van City) are about the middle of the tax increase range, and the tree highest and three lowest tax increase cities are across the spectrum of density, with none of them in the top 4 growth wise. With an R-squared of 0.003, the data here just doesn’t correlate.

The data does not tell the whole story, as it never does in these comparisons, because these are 20 different municipalities with different pressures and priorities. Some cities are intentionally running their reserves down to avoid tax increases, while others are building reserves. Some are making up for previous council underfunding of services, others are paring back on services. Langley City increasing taxes at a high rate doesn’t tell you that they have gone from the lowest-taxed jurisdiction in the region to the third-from lowest, or that West Vancouver at one tenth the density of New Westminster and with the lowest rate of growth in the entire region is still the highest-taxed municipality in Greater Vancouver, despite its relatively modest tax increases in the last few years. There are stories to be told in this data beyond the simple scatter graph; the anecdotes that Todd relies on belie those details.

His narrative is that density and growth are bad, and he will find any ill the public has concerns about, and blame it on density and growth, facts be damned.

The last time Douglas Todd wrote about New West, he lamented there are no cafes on Carnarvon Street, when there are at least 4 places to get coffee in the 500m stretch of Carnarvon he was describing. I just don’t know where Mr. Todd gets his bad information about our City. He sure never calls me.

If you want to read more into the data above, here’s my table. If you find a wrong number, or have Anmore tax data and really want me to include it, let me know!

Action

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

Full report to follow, but last night Council endorsed a comprehensive package of actions arising from our ongoing Crises Response Pilot Project. After more than a year of coordination with provincial and non-profit partners, consultation with health care professionals and other jurisdictions, and conversations with residents and businesses in the community, staff have developed a road map of actions for the year ahead and beyond. And there is a lot there.

These two overlapping action plans, a Prevention, Support and Transition Services Plan and Supportive Housing and Wrap-Around Services Plan are about addressing the needs of people who are experiencing the three crises with a focus on supportive housing, and addressing the externalities associated with the three crises that impact other residents and businesses.

There are more than a dozen specific actions – too long a list to include here (though you can read the comprehensive report here). This includes introducing a situation table approach to connect people with services, supporting seasonal and temporary shelter capacity, a Health Connect and Resource Centre, improved harm reduction services, working with RCH in discharge planning, expediting construction of supportive housing with wrap-around care and a continuum of care from detox (where needed) to recovery (where appropriate), trauma informed and culturally-safe Indigenous housing, and much more. At the heart of this work is better coordination with and between the existing Assertive Community Treatment Team, the Integrated Homelessness Action Response Team, the Peer Assisted Care Team and the Substance Use Services and Access Team. All of this in collaboration with BC Housing, the Ministry of Health and the Fraser Health Authority.

What we didn’t discuss much last night was the work that out Operations Support Teams are doing to address waste management, hygiene, and Bylaw compliance or the work of our Community Liaison Officers in support of local business and residents who are also impacted by the three crises.

The community has been asking us to act, and we are acting. We are not pointing fingers, we are not punching down, we are not kicking this down the road or giving up in defeat. We are showing leadership. We are working with our partners in the province and supporting our community using evidence-based approaches. We don’t need to re-invent the wheel here, we are applying the knowledge gained and learning from the experiences (good and bad) of other jurisdictions, and are approaching this work with clear purpose. We are putting resources where they are needed, and better supporting the resources already out there, and are advocating ceaselessly with senior government to better fund the long term solutions our community and every community needs: housing and healthcare.

I want to thank the many members of the community who showed up yesterday at Council and those who wrote to Mayor and Council expressing support for this work. I also want to thank the many business owners and residents who helped guide us through this planning process. You asked hard questions and deserve clear answers, and I expect you will continue to hold us accountable. We hear you, and will continue to listen and adapt as the conditions on the ground change. As was emphasized at the Economic Forum last week, we are a community, and only by working together will we assure everyone is supported, kept safe, and able to prosper in this incredible, proactive, compassionate and engaged community.

2025

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

Is it just me, or did the Christmas break seemed a little extended his year? Maybe it’s the pace of media events unfolding faster than real life, maybe it’s the mid-week Christmas and New Years day that seems to encroach on two weekends, maybe its the existential dread…

This first week I was really back at it in the office, and it involved quite a bit of planning for what is coming in 2025. It looks like it’s going to be a big year, so I thought I would jot down some thoughts about what is on the horizon for New Westminster in 2025.

The biggest body of work in front of us right now are updates to our Official Community Plan to comply with the provincial housing regulations introduced last year. We have several interim measures in place to address SSMUH, TOA development and Amenity Funding, but much has changed, such that our understanding of the legislation and how it integrates with the City’s existing policies and Bylaws, that those three links I just pointed to are probably no longer very accurate. By December, 2025, we will need to have updated our OCP to include SSMUH across the City and TOA, to align our OCP with the newly regulated Housing Needs Assessment reports, and to figure out where townhouses and row homes fit in this new model. There will be some level of public consultation in regards to these OCP updates, so keep tuned to Be Heard New West if you are interested.

We will also be bringing forward new policies to address the provincial regulatory changes in how we finance growth. With new housing comes new infrastructure needs, from roads to sewers and parks, and new amenity needs like recreation and childcare. We use DCCs to pay for the former, but now have the tool called ACC to pay for the latter. However, this new tool comes with complications, and impacts our Density Bonus and other programs. We have an interim measure in place now, but by mid-2025 will have to have new ACC and Density Bonus policies in place, and will need to have a better understanding of the community need projected for ward a decade so we know what exactly it is we are trying to finance.

Fortunately, we are almost completed our new Parks and Recreation Comprehensive Plan, and expect to adopt a plan in 2025 that will set the course for the next generation of Parks and Rec investments. We have already been through some extensive public consultation on this, both from the “general public” and directed consultation with user groups like organized sports teams, youth, seniors, and neighbourhood groups. There is a tonne of reporting out you can read here. This consultation will be backstopped by detailed analysis by staff and consultants on anticipated needs for the decade ahead, recognizing the recreation space is different than it was even a decade ago as our population grows and demographics shift, as youth gravitate to less formal sports structures, as the regional offerings of fields, rinks, and pools has evolved, and as emergent trends (pickleball, anyone?) and shifting interest in park use towards more passive uses mean what we used ot need is not what we will be needing looking forward. I’m really excited to see where this study takes us as a community.

You may have heard the news that Lisa Spitale is retiring at the end of 2025, and the hiring of a new CAO is a pretty significant piece of work for Council – the only time we really get involved in HR projects. I also can emphasize how much of a shift this represents. Lisa has worked for New Westminster since 1992, and was appointed CAO in 2013. She has worked for five different mayors, and seen the population of New Westminster double during her New West career. She is one of the most respected City Managers in the province, highly respected by her staff, by the business community, and by the professional and academic planning communities. She is also a pleasure to work with. Council will have our work cut out for us filling those shoes.

The City is working with the Chamber of Commerce on an Economic Forum this February. The idea is to bring local and regional business leaders together for the first time in the Post-COVID world and discuss challenges and opportunities for both the local and regional economy. With the integration of Economic Development and Arts and Culture under the new Community Services department, and with our local economic indicators all trending in a positive direction (even compared to numbers from before the COVID dip), there are a lot of reasons to be positive about economic growth in New West. But there is still nervousness around affordability and with the chaos down south and in Ottawa, we are looking at uncertainty in the future. The conversations at the forum about how we can better support and future-proof local businesses should be a positive one, and should help us set a course for EcDev work for the rest of the term.

I am also excited to see where the Youth Climate Leadership Team will be taking us in 2025. This new program brings a group of local folks between 15 and 24 years old to work on a project of project s of their own choosing with City support, with the goals of giving youth some leadership experience, and moving the needle on climate action in the City. There have been two meetings so far, and the group is deep into the forming and visioning stages, with a plan to come to Council before the beginning of summer with project proposals.

We will also be striking a Vision Zero task force this spring to shift the mindset around road safety in the city. I don’t expect there will be a lot of public-facing results from this task force right up front, as the first phase of work involves bringing partners and stakeholders together (engineering, police, fire, and provincial agencies involved in transportation and public health) to understand who is doing what, who holds jurisdiction where, and who is collecting what data. This aligns with the multidisciplinary and data-driven approach that makes Vision Zero different than the traditional models of road safety. I’m excited about this work!

And then there are ongoing programs that are ramping up in 2025: continued implementation of the Active Transportation Network Plan that hopes to bring mobility lanes to all major destinations and within 400m of every home in New West; full staffing and activation of the Crises Response Pilot Project; continued work with the development community, senior governments and the non-profit community to address our Housing Needs Report; and more.

It’s going to be a busy year, and let’s hope the political distractions (federal elections, American instability, social media enshittification, etc.) don’t distract from the value of this good work, and our ability to meaningfully engage the community in a positive and proactive way about the work.

Halfway

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

The half way mark in this Council term arrived yesterday, and an interesting two years it has been.

People often ask me if it what I expected, and my honest answer is not really. The job is different than the Councillor job, and there is no doubt we are in a different political environment now than we were two years ago. Folks who followed my path here (Hi Mom!) know that I got into this work without a “politics” background, but a background of working and volunteering in the community. When your mindset to problem solving has always been what works best practically (follow the evidence) and where does the community want to go here (follow the community), the shift to include how will this be torqued for political speaking points (follow the meme) takes learning a new set of skills, and a tremendous amount of patience. Not being a trained political lobbyist, this is a steep learning curve.

That said, there are many successes to celebrate from the last two years, and more clarity on the challenges facing us in the next two. In my mind, there are three big news stories in the first half of the term:

Changing Legislation. The provincial government took some bold action on the overlapping housing crises that have been plaguing our region for a decade or more. There was a lot of talk about this, and some pitched political battles between a few local governments and the province. I didn’t stay out of the fray. I said at the time, and continue to believe, that big changes had to happen, and to my Mayor cohort who were gnashing teeth and rending garments, my response was mostly to say “you really should have seen this coming”.

The path we were on was not sustainable, and as radical as the changes proposed seemed at the time, they are not immediate shifts, but long-term system changes that will take a decade or more to demonstrate their value. I am still concerned that the changes they emphasize the wrong tool (“the market”) to solve a problem caused by overreliance on that same tool. None of these changes will make a substantial change unless we have senior governments significantly increase their investment in building non-market housing. And I continue to push to province on our need for investment in schools, child care, and other infrastructure the needs to come with new housing.

Like in other Cities, the sudden legislative changes caused significant work load challenges for staff. Unexpected and foundational shifts in our OCP and Zoning bylaws are not easy to implement, and our new Housing Division did incredible work, met our regulatory deadlines, but also set a path to a new OCP that fits in our community. We were also fortunate to have secured Housing Accelerator Fund support that overlapped with this work, and allowed us to staff up and bring in additional resources to get the job done.

Opening təməsew̓txʷ. No doubt the opening of the single largest capital investment the City has ever made is big news. The doubling of aquatic and recreation space is an important investment, as our population has almost doubled since the CGP was opened in 1972. As expected with a state-of-the-art facility (filter and water management technology that is first in Canada, being the first Zero Carbon certified aquatic facility) of its scale, there were a few technical teething problems, but they are being managed under warranty, and have not taken away from the popularity of the facility. To find out it was listed by the Prix Versailles as a 2024 Laureate is unexpected and something the City of New Westminster should be proud of.

The big decisions about təməsew̓txʷ were made by the previous Council (including the critical “Go-or-No” decision during the uncertainty of summer 2020 that almost certainly saved the City a hundred million dollars), but the opening of the pool means that a myriad of operational decisions, and finding room in the budget for the new staff compliment, is something this Council oversaw. And now with the Parks and Recreation Comprehensive Plan being developed to envision the next decade of recreation investments, it is an exciting time for asset renewal in the City.

One Man Down: Jaimie McEvoy having a serious heart attack and missing a big portion of this year was also something the framed how Council operated, and the work that the rest of Council was able to get done. It also created some procedural uncertainty around what we do when a Member of Council needs to take a medical leave longer than a few days – believe it or not, we didn’t have procedures around this, nor does the Community Charter, or (as best we can tell) any other local government in BC. We are glad Jaimie is now able to transition back into the job and provide his voice to Council, and do those many other things in the community that keep us all grounded.

Halftime is also a goodtime to measure how we are doing in the goals we set for ourselves as a Council. Fortunately, we have two recent reports to Council on this. At the end of September, we received a report called “Council Strategic Priorities Plan Quarterly Status Update” which outlined staff’s assessment of where progress is on the 5 Strategic Priorities and the 49 action categories, using a traffic light model. The majority of items are “green”, indicating we are on track and meeting our performance indicators. Sixteen are “yellow” – meaning at least one performance indicator is falling behind and there are concerns to address. There are seven items that are “red”, indicating we are not on track, and there are concerns about our ability to achieve them.

The biggest challenge in the “red” category is simply resources: staff time and the ability to finance more staff time. There are also some senior government regulatory and funding issues we need to be more effective in advocating toward. However, progress on track or near track for 86% of our objectives is an excellent measure.

The bigger question isn’t how staff feel we are doing, but how the community feels about it, and the good news here is found in our recently-completed Ipsos Survey of the community. This was discussed in Workshop last week, and you can read it all here.

These kind of things always work better graphically, but the short story is that 88% of New West residents find the quality of life in new Westminster Good or Very good, 77% are Satisfied or Very Satisfied with the level of service they receive from the City, and 78% think they get Good of Very Good value for their tax dollar in New Westminster.

On Council Strategic Priorities, most residents feel are doing a good job on most of the priorities:

Meeting the City’s housing need is the only area where the majority feel we are not meeting community expectations, but traffic safety also comes in lower than most. It is perhaps no surprise that housing affordability, homelessness, and traffic are the biggest issues in the community in the extended survey questions. We know this, we can feel it when we talk to folks, but it is good to have come confirmation that what we hear in the bubble is connected to what is happening in the community. With all due respect to Facebook comments and partisan jabs, it is valuable to have actual random survey data that connects with the community and gets a defensible “mood of the room”. If I can summarize: we are doing well, mostly on target, but most certainly have some work to do. That is a good half-way mark check in.

The one thing we are not doing as well as I would like to celebrating our wins. There has been great foundational work this term – region-leading work – that hardly gets the fanfare it deserves, because it is hard stuff to “cut a ribbon” in front of. Our new Code of Conduct Bylaw and functional Ethics Commissioner; bringing the Electrical Utility and Climate Action together into a new Department of Energy and Climate; amalgamating various service areas into a new Department of Community Services; changes that fast-track Childcare and Affordable Housing approvals; our provincially-recognized and lauded Community Advisory Assembly model. This is progress that builds us for future success.

No resting on laurels, but I do feel proud of the work we have done to date, especially considering significant political headwinds and a surprises like the new provincial housing regulations. On to year three!

Columbia Square

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. 3 Comments.

We had a special meeting on Monday to decide on whether to give three readings to a rezoning bylaw for Columbia Square. This was a decision deferred from last week, where there was some robust discussion and some adaptation of the proposal rising from that discussion, so Council taking an extra week to chew on it was probably a wise move. It is also the highest-profile project since Pier West was approved back in 2017, and is the largest single development to reach this level of approval since I started on Council a decade ago, so it is worth spending some time writing out the details and addressing some of the feedback, as I did with Pier West all those years ago. The reports for Council are all here if you want to read all of the details. 

Not to bury the lede, Council voted 5-2 to support the three readings. It is a slightly unusual process we are going through, so I want to be clear what that means. Voting against these three readings would effectively kill the project as proposed, though the developer could come back at a later date with a revised proposal which would be a lengthy process. Approving the three readings will launch a development planning process to determine how the objectives of the proposal will be met within the density and land use allocation included in the zoning bylaw. After that process, Council would have the option to Adopt the Bylaw (“final approval”) or reject it. This planning process will take several months or longer. In approving three readings, Council effectively said “we like where you are going here, prove you can keep all of the commitments to the community as you build”.

The details of the project are that the strip mall and parking lots on the 7.2 acre site would be replaced in a phased process. When built out, it would include up to 3,000,000 square feet of residential floor space in up to 8 towers. The existing 122,000sqft of retail space would be replaced, in a phased process so that every operating business has first right to refusal to relocate to the new spaces, starting with the major grocery store. There would also be 42,000sqft of Class A office space, a 9,500sqft non-profit childcare, and up to 12,000sqft of additional childcare. The current parking lot and strip model urban form would be replaced by towers-on-podia, with 25% of the ground space dedicated to public green space, including a 50,000sqft public square.

The housing tenure is one of the things that will be further refined though planning, but as current proposed, it would be about 3,800 residential units that meets the City’s Family Friend Housing policy n regards to two- and three-bedroom units. At minimum, 20% of the units would be Purpose Built Rental at market rates, and a minimum 20% of these would be non-market affordable housing operated by a non-for-profit at HILs rates.

One of the complicating factors here is the desire for a school site downtown. The developer is committed through this agreement to work with School District 40 to accommodate a school site on the property. For practical reasons, this would likely involve an “air space parcel” in one of the podia. However, the developer cannot commit that the School District or the Provincial Ministry of Education will agree to this model, or even if the School District will want this (as they may come up with alternate plans on a different site), so the extra 12,000sqft of childcare space on site will be delivered by the developer if the school site is not.

My reasons for voting to approve may be different than those of other members of Council, so I am only speaking for myself here. Recognizing some details we need to work out, the question before us was whether we want 3,800 homes or a car-oriented strip mall one block from a SkyTrain Station and in the centre of our Downtown. We have seen other neighbourhoods from Broadway and Commercial to Braid Station remain parking oriented because proposed development in these key transit hubs have always fallen short of perfect and ended up the enemy of good. We need homes in this region, and in this City. Our own Hosing Needs Assessment demonstrates the need for market housing that this will go a long way toward fulfilling (recognizing that it will not address as much of our non-market housing need, but more on that later).

In this project, I see that the retail is protected, not just the space, but in a phasing plan that allows the retailers and service businesses there to remain whole though redevelopment. We have a unique opportunity to secure a school site (not to mention several million dollars in School Site Acquisition Charges directed to the Provincial Government). I also see the re-imagining of 7 acres of parking lot and strip mall as vibrant public space just steps from a SkyTrain station. The project will also provide tens of millions of dollars DCC funding to upgrade the adjacent water, sewer and transportation infrastructure, including more than $10 Million in Park Land Acquisition DCC funding.

The affordable housing math on this site was always a stumbling block. With the commitment of 4% of the total residential space as true non-market affordable housing secured for 60 years, we could have between 140 and 170 units (depending on unit size and breakdown) of affordable housing on site – that is equivalent of two Móytel Lalém projects (the new Affordable Housing building across from the High School). It also includes an estimated $60 – $70 Million in Density Bonus money, the bulk of which Council has committed to land acquisition to support affordable housing development. It’s a bit “inside baseball” here, but the City is less successful than we could be at securing senior government affordable housing support simply because we don’t have a lot of City-owned land to put forward. Having access to these reserve funds as seed to new affordable housing investments could turn the table on affordable housing development in our city, and might be the best tool we have to reach our housing targets for non-market housing. This is a really important step for the most pressing need for our community, and will put New West in the driver’s seat with BC Housing and BC Builds.

I’m not satisfied waiting when housing is in such a need in our community and in the region. We can wait for a market to shift to eke out a few dozen more on-site affordable homes, but waiting does nothing to get affordable housing built now when the need is so acute, and does nothing to get the market housing we also need to get built. The region is growing, 1,000,000 new people by the 2040s, and not building high-density high-service housing nest to SkyTrain station in our Downtowns simply pushes the need out to the fringes of the Lower Mainland. It adds pressure to sprawl outside the Urban Containment Boundary, and not only erodes our farm and ecological lands at the periphery, but exacerbates our regional transportation challenges, undermines our Climate goals, and puts enormous cost pressure on our utilities and infrastructure. Homes on Skytrain is not only our OCP, it is our regional plan.

This is a big project, and many concerns were raised about it, so it only fair that I respond to the ones I heard the most. I am not going to engage in silliness like comparing this site to Revelstoke (it’s not a comparable, nor are Chetwynd or Lloydminster) or “Four World Trade Centres!”. That king of misinforming rhetoric is pure politics and best responded to in my Newsletter (subscribe here). But there are real concerns from residents that deserve response, and I can pull most from just one Facebook thread (citations removed to protect the innocent, this isn’t about punching down, it’s about addressing concerns)

“The City has no proper infrastructure to support thousands of more people! Schools, hospitals, policing, fire, and city services”
This project will provide tens of millions of dollars in DCC funds to upgrade the water sewer and transportation infrastructure around the site. There will also be upgrades to electrical and other infrastructure along with the project. There is an opportunity for a school on the site and the project will provide School Site Acquisition Charges at the maximum level permitted by Provincial Law. RCH is current in phase two of a massive expansion, more than doubling its size, but its ability to serve the community may be limited by the lack of housing for critical workers who run a hospital, this housing may help with that. Policing, Fire, and city services are primarily paid by property taxes, and the annual property taxes paid for this site will (by Councilor’s McEvoys back-of the-envelope estimate) increase by almost $5 million a year, while the cost to service high density residents in high rises is the lowest per capita.

There are many versions of “we don’t have the services to support housing” argument around the region, and in other high-growth cities from Surrey to Toronto . But there is a false math in this, the presumption that people will only come if we approve housing. The simple and measurable fact is that both this city and this region are increasing in population faster than the rate of housing growth – much faster. People are increasingly underhoused and facing terrible housing security as the vacancy rate bounces around 1% and prices spiral out of reach. Its not just that people need schools and childcare and hospitals; they need these things AND they need housing. Not building housing will not get those other things built faster. The City doesn’t build hospitals or schools, but we can be supportive and advocate for their being built (like we are right now with the RCH expansion, the expansion of the elementary schools at Queensborough, the upcoming Simcoe Park school, and our work to leverage a school site out of this project). And the people who work in those hospitals and schools are going to need homes – that is the part we are responsible for providing as Cities.

“It’s already a traffic nightmare and now you want to add even more traffic to the roads downtown new west.”
The biggest challenge we have with traffic in New Westminster is through-traffic, not residents. This project is completely in line with the regional plan (Metro2050) and Regional Transportation Plan (Transport2050), both of which emphasize building more housing on rapid transit, reducing parking requirements, and providing full-service communities to reduce the need for people to be automobile dependent. The success of those plans can be seen in New Westminster growing by 9% between the last two TransLink Trip Diary surveys, and our use of automobiles not increasing a single percent during that time. People are moving to the region, and need homes. We can choose to build high-service high-density homes near work places and near SkyTrain stations, or to build those other forms on the periphery of the region that give people no option but to drive for their daily needs. One of those two options creates more traffic. Those school and hospital workers, the people working in the retail and office spaces here in New West, if they all need to drive from Langley to get to work we have created the North Shore model of traffic congestion and harmed the livability of our city and others.

“Translink really does need a major upgrade to handle this kind of population increase, more bikelanes and greenways would be nice too”
I hear you. TransLink’s current expansion plans include a doubling the Expo Line train service and more than doubling regional bus service. It isn’t completely funded, but the Mayors Council is working hard to secure the capital investments and a secure operational funding model to meet these needs. I am confident the governments will see their way to support Transit, as it is the only real solution to getting around our growing region. Replacing a strip mall parking lot with open greenspace people can more safely walk, cycle, and preamble through will be a benefit of this project, as are the millions in Transportation DCCs this project will provide. Providing full-service neighbourhoods is why we work to leverage protection of the existing businesses and childcare out of sites like this.

“How about building more low income housing for those waiting on bc housing list? ”
This project will have between 140-170 non-market affordable homes. Saying “no” to this site right now will do nothing to add to the affordable housing stock. The biggest benefit to affordable housing will be the City’s commitment to use the bulk of the Density Bonus money to secure land and leverage senior government affordable housing investment here in New Westminster.

“What happens to all the businesses currently in Columbia Square?”
With the phasing of the project, there will be opportunity for the businesses to relocate to new spaces, starting with the large grocery store. The retail will be replaced one-for-one and the current operators will have first right of refusal on new sites.

The bigger question about businesses downtown is also relevant, as the Chamber of Commerce and the Downtown BIA provided letters of support for the project. Aside from preserving the businesses on site, it shouldn’t be hard to see that 7,000 new customers a 5 minute walk from your doorstep every day should be a good thing for customer-serving businesses? And this means more business success and variety for the rest of us to enjoy as well. A vibrant commercial community needs a local customer base.

There is general anxiety about the rate of growth, in New Westminster, in the Lower Mainland, and in Canada. I hear it. and I’ll let the economists argue the benefits of this to capitalism, but also suggest that in an increasingly uncertain post-pandemic global order of climate disruption and authoritarian uprisings, Canada will only increasingly be seen as a safe harbour of stability, and the pressure in immigration will only increase. That said, I circle back to this project being consistent with the growth envisioned in the City’s 7-year-old Official Community Plan and completely in line with the anticipated growth in our Regional Growth Strategy, with the housing need identified in our community for the decade ahead. The project as proposed gives us access to infrastructure and amenities the community wants, either directly (childcare, school site, DCC funding) or indirectly (density bonus, increased tax revenue), and is a good deal for the community.

Now that Council had given the rezoning three readings, there will be a Master Plan process that will include community and stakeholder engagement. This is where the real details of the site will be shaped, and I hope people continue to engage.