Wednesday, October 24, 2012

Density coming to 200th Street?

A few years back, the provincial government changed the BC building code to allow the construction of up to six storey wood frame buildings. That change to the building code is starting to have an effect in the Township of Langley. It has allowed for an increase in density without resorting to building towers. (From what I’ve been told concrete buildings don’t make financial sense until they reach a certain high.) The Yorkson Creek development is the first project that I’m aware of that is building six storey apartments in Langley and now there is another project that is proposing to develop five storey apartments on the corner of 68th Avenue and 200th Street.

The project actually went to public hearing in 2010 where it died. Local residents where opposed to having density right next to their single-family houses. The new version of the plan has about 100 less units and includes single-family houses, more townhouses, and duplexes in the project to buffer the existing single-family houses from the apartments.

Example of apartments being proposed.

Site plan

The proposal still includes protecting a significant area of Jeffries Brook riparian habitat by dedicating 0.89 ha to the Township for conservation purposes. Two years later and with other similarly sized apartments already built, I wonder if there will be the same amount of opposition this time around.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Until there are sufficient resources in the neighborhood for the people that currently live there (schools, parking, traffic capacity and calming, etc.) then there will be substantial opposition. This is a radical change to the neighborhood plan and is not acceptable.