Tuesday, December 17, 2019

December 16 Council Meeting: Proposed Downtown 6-storey, mixed-use building. Board appointments renewed.

Last night was the final public Langley City council meeting for the year. The next meeting will be on January 13, 2020.

Council gave first and second reading to a rezoning bylaw which will accommodate a proposed 6-storey, mixed-use building that will front Logan Avenue, 203 A Street, and Locke Lane near the casino. This building is proposed to have 114 apartment units and 2,085 square feet of ground-level retail space. An average coffee shop is around 1,000 square feet.

Ground-level view from 203 A Street and Locke Lane. Select image to enlarge.

View from Logan Avenue. Select image to enlarge.

Top-down view from Locke Lane. Select image to enlarge.

Because the site is located next to high-frequency bus transit today, and will be a short walk from the future 203rd Street SkyTrain station, the number of parking spots is proposed to be reduced from the typical 214 spaces to 192 spaces. This helps make the ground-level retail proposed as part of this project viable.

The proposed siting of the project will also allow the upgrade of Logan Avenue to include a wider sidewalk and protected bike lanes in the future.

A public hearing will be scheduled in the new year for this proposed development project.

I posted about City-controlled utility rate changes for 2020 yesterday. These changes were given final reading last night. Also, council gave final reading to a bylaw which updates the intermunicipal business license program which I posted about previously.

Council approved reappointing Mayor van den Broek to the Metro Vancouver Regional District board for 2020 (with Councillor Martin as the alternate.) Council also approved reappointing Councillor Martin to the Fraser Valley Regional Library Board (with Councillor James as the alternate.)

Tomorrow, I will be continuing my post about Monday night’s council meeting.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

It’s great that there is new development in the city. But what about the safety of residents in those new buildings? Council passed a budget and raised property taxes last year to hire additional firefighters for the city and yet to this day there has been no increase at all. Highrise buildings require more firefighters to ensure resident and firefighter safety in the event of a fire emergency. So with all this new development and the possibility of sky train coming to Langley City what is council doing for public safety?

Nathan Pachal said...

Thank you for the comment. Are you stated, council did approved budget for additional firefighters in last year's budget. It is my expectation that those position will be filled.

As population continues to increase, we need to make sure we have a plan in place to ensure that protective services keep pace.

With the new Official Community Plan under development right now, it will trigger other master plans to be updated of which I'm hoping will include a plan for protective services.