23 January 2008
Nanaimo looks to control sprawl
Posted by Ryan Coffey under: Nanaimo Profile and Events; Nanaimo Real Estate Market; Uncategorized .
Something I found in one of our local newspapers, the Nanaimo News Bulletin. Nanaimo has been growing rapidly in recent years and now the city is looking for input from its citizens on how to handle it.
Ryan
Nanaimo looks to control sprawl
By Darrell Bellaart – Nanaimo News Bulletin – January 17, 2008
The city wants to tear down the barrier that separates urban and rural Nanaimo.
That barrier is known as the urban containment boundary, but city planners say the rapid pace of development – both inside and outside the city – mean it’s time to do away with the UCB.
That is, push it to the edge of the city.
The issue surfaced over the past year as part of the 10-year review of the city’s official community plan.
Meanwhile, council approved an application from the Snuneymuxw First Nation which includes a massive shopping mall near Chase River.
The city is also considering an application for an upscale golf course and large residential community at Cable Bay, overlooking Dodd Narrows.
Both projects require moving the boundary.
The OCP review also triggered demands from the semi-rural Jingle Pot area to be moved inside the UCB, allowing sewer lines to be connected to the neighbourhood.
“So we’ve got those three major applications – one’s already approved and the other two that council directed us to get on with and we’re holding back the draft OCP because of these applications,” said Ted Swabey, city planning director.
So this week he took a report to city council that recommends writing a draft plan with the UCB moved to the city limits.
“All that’s left is Linley Valley, [so] we might as well go get public input on putting the UCB at the city boundary, because we’re already heading that way,” Swabey said.
Council gave staff the go-ahead to prepare the draft, which will soon go out to the public.
The UCB was originally created to keep development in developed areas. That controls taxes, by preventing urban sprawl and the associated costs for more services like roads, water, sewer, sidewalks and the like.
But development is now happening, in some cases, faster outside of the UCB – in the rural areas – than within the city.
City manager Jerry Berry demonstrated this for council Monday with a slide show presentation showing massive houses popping up in Errington, where there are few zoning rules to regulate growth.
That lack of regulation creates a quandary for city taxpayers, who fork over considerable taxes and where developers pay hefty development cost charges for roads, parks and other amenities. Many of these services benefit non-residents who pay nothing for them.
“Outside the city there isn’t a level playing field,” Swabey said.
The city wants to get the Regional District of Nanaimo on side, by writing zoning laws that would direct growth into the urban “nodes” – Nanaimo, Lantzville, Parksville and Qualicum Beach.
“The first step in doing that is move the UCB to the city boundary and recognize we are the largest urban node in the region,” Swabey said.
With seven members on the 16-member RDN board, the city now has considerable clout, but the city hopes it can work co-operatively with the region.
Joe Stanhope, RDN board chairman, said the RDN’s regional growth strategy is targeting rural sprawl. But he agreed development pressures are mounting with the region.
“A lot of investment companies want to develop, instead of having forestry, so there’s a lot of development issues,” Stanhope said. “We’ve got to deal with it.”
Frank Garnish, a Cedar resident and vocal opponent of the Cable Bay proposal, said moving the UCB would equate to approving the Cable Bay development.
Swabey disagreed.
“We’re still at the beginning of the process,” he said. “What we would do, if Cable Bay failed, we would still want the urban containment boundary at the city boundary.”
The next step will be public consultation, through special workshops, open houses and other public forums.
“It will start to happen over the next month. It’s a four-month process,” Swabey said.