More rental units are coming to downtown Squamish, but with one condition—you’re not allowed to park a car there.
At the July 15 regular council meeting, Squamish councillors voted to support a development permit for a six-storey mixed-use building at 38006 Cleveland Ave.
The permit came with a parking variance to get rid of the required 20 residential off-street parking and remove all eight commercial parking spaces—for a cash-in-lieu payment of $240,000.
District planner Bryan Daly said the residential unit mix, built by AMC Project Development, would consist of 15 studios, four one-bedroom and one two-bedroom units.
All of the units would be secured as market rentals.
“The unit mix is tailored to and fits the small lot characteristics of the property. The proposed development will consist of 218 square metres of ground floor retail, 158 square metres of office space on the second and third stories, and 20 residential units on the third to sixth stories,” Daly said.
“Common outdoor amenity space is provided on the fifth and sixth floors with a covered portion of the outdoor amenity space on the sixth floor. Indoor amenity space is not required because only 20 units are proposed, and therefore this requirement is not triggered.”
The building would be built at close to 20 metres.
Daly noted that the building did not meet the parking requirements, which is why a variance was requested to remove all required stalls.
“The required parking for this development is 28 stalls, 20 for the residential units and eight for the non residential uses,” he said.
“The variances are requested in order to maximize the number of rental units and employment space the project can deliver. Providing off street parking spaces would significantly reduce the area available on the ground floor for employment space.”
According to Daly, the applicant noted that reducing the number of residential units to accommodate parking would not make the project financially viable.
He also said District staff were supportive of the variances for a number of reasons, one being that the property is located in “one of the most walkable locations in Squamish.”
“It is 300 metres from the downtown transit exchange, approximately 600 metres from a full-service grocery store, and approximately 100 metres from Stan Clarke Park, and is adjacent to the commercial businesses on Cleveland Avenue,” Daly said.
“The developer is also committed to providing a financial contribution to Modo Carsharing Co-op to secure car share membership for each residential unit, reducing the financial burden of using car share services downtown.”
Public hearing
Before council voted, a public hearing was held at the meeting for the development permit application, and a spokesperson for the developers, as well as one resident, spoke on the topic.
Bryan Hawkey spoke on behalf of AMC Project Development to explain their approach to the property.
“The property size, location and relative narrowness make providing ground floor parking impractical and would serve to diminish the architecture on this prominent corner. Therefore, given the limited ability to provide on-site parking, we focused on providing a suite mix that is more conducive to residents using alternative transportation needs,” Hawkey said.
“Specifically, we opted for small suites whose residents will be less likely to generate higher parking demands. While we know that it is a District priority to create housing for families, this type of housing needs to be supported by parking, which this property cannot efficiently provide.
“Since the project is primarily studios and one bedrooms, we focused on providing extensive outdoor spaces and a co-working office on level three, to give residents additional flexibility in how they work from home, again, aimed at reducing car dependency.”
Hawkey said that to limit the demand on unloading, 15 of the 20 units will be furnished.
Garibaldi Highlands resident Spencer Fitschen said that the removal of parking for residents and commercial tenants was unreasonable, given that “people have cars.”
“The complete elimination of requirements for parking does make me feel that we as citizens in the District of Squamish are being asked effectively to subsidize the proponent on this project,” he said.
“The tenants and commercial people in this building will have cars, not all of them, maybe, but they will have cars. That's the nature of the thing. Even if we all turn electric, we're still going to have vehicles. And they're going to have to be put somewhere.”
Fitschen said that generally, a variance request comes with a substitution for something “equal or better,” but he felt like that did not occur here.
“I find that this project, with this reduction in parking, really should be something that council has a very difficult time with,” he said.
Council comment
Despite ultimately supporting the development permit and associated variances, not all councillors voiced support.
Not in support of the development offering zero parking options for residents were councillors Jenna Stoner and Lauren Greenlaw.
“I will not be supporting the motion on the floor, and would urge my other fellow colleagues to reconsider their positions,” Stoner said.
“I feel like it's asking and trying to put too much on one lot that is really a core component of our downtown streetscape, and without the necessary support to actually ensure that it's going to be functional over the life of the building.
“I don't see a fulsome vision for how that's going to be successful given that we don't have a functional downtown parking management system at this time.”
Stoner said she would prefer to see employment spaces provided in the location as opposed to residential.
“I'd rather see a two-storey employment and commercial space building in this space, rather than what is proposed here, and let go of some of the housing targets specifically so that we can ensure that we are making a downtown streetscape on our high street that is vibrant and activated,” she said.
Similarly Coun. Greenlaw said it seemed unfair to support such a variance when the public has said “they would like to see more from developers, not less.”
“We've heard loud and clear that our public does not want to see further reductive parking exemptions in downtown Squamish. We already only have one stall per dwelling downtown, which is sparse for a place like Squamish that is woefully underserved by transit,” Greenlaw said.
“To make this kind of exception, for a development that's not even below market, is just not a reasonable trade off. Furthermore, this is at least the third development that has been brought forward in the past few months where it has been noted that the development would not be viable without concessions, and that's not our problem.
“Given that the public has given feedback that they would like to see more from developers, not less, approving proposals such as this is in direct contradiction from public feedback.”
Speaking in support of the application. Coun. John French said the development proposal was “bold and also forward thinking.”
“This really works best if three years from now, we have regional transit systems serving from Pemberton to the North Shore and frequent transit between our downtown and the Garibaldi Estates. I'm confident that those key transportation pieces will be in place when this building is ready for residents to move in,” he said.
“So this combined with the car share membership for each unit, the new bike share program that we have in Squamish and improved active transit infrastructure downtown, developments like this one, I believe, are going to work.”
He also said that people who opt to live in the complex would do so knowing that it is a car-free space and that vehicle ownership would be difficult as a resident of the building.
Mayor Armand Hurford echoed French’s comments to say that the rental units would be targeted towards a specific demographic of people.
“We have an opportunity to have 20 units that are rental only, where it's clearly articulated that in each tenancy agreement, that there's no dedicated parking available on site or on street in association with each unit. I can't think of a better spot for that,” he said.
“This place is not for everybody. It's for 20 folks or couples or households that can live within that [regulation].”
Coun. Chris Pettingill said that the way to stop parking issues related to developments is to limit the number of parking options available.
“What I hear over and over from people, what they're really saying is they are concerned about competition for public parking spaces and traffic on the streets,” he said.
“As much as people might wish otherwise, we don't have great tools to stop people from moving to Squamish. We have a lot more tools at our disposal to minimize the number of cars attached to those new residents.
“So if we want to impact the day-to-day livability, things that people are actually caring about, we have to do things that, as people come, they bring less cars.”
He also said the District has “grossly over-served the vehicle-demanding public” and that there is a small group of people who want the affordability of not having a car that deserves to be accommodated.
“We need the public support to make sure that collectively, our culture is not one where you expect that if you have private vehicles, you just put them out on the street. If you have a private vehicle, you need to take responsibility for securing your own private parking for that, and that is the cultural shift we need to make,” he said.
Councillors voted 5-2 in favour of issuing a development permit for the mixed-use building, with councillors Greenlaw and Stoner opposed.
Later in the meeting, a housing agreement bylaw for the development was given its first three readings.
All councillors voted in support.
