New “King Taps” to replace “Red Robin” at 200th and the Langley Bypass

Yesterday was the final meeting of the current Langley City Council. The recently elected Council’s first meeting is on November 7th, but because Councils are continuing bodies in BC, the business of City Hall continues uninterrupted.

Council issued a development permit for redeveloping what is currently a Red Robin restaurant at 6141 200 Street at the Langley Bypass into a new King Taps restaurant.

View of the building from the parking lot. Select the image to enlarge.

All projects requiring rezoning or a development permit go through an Advisory Design Panel, a committee of Council that includes landscape architects, architects, accessibility representatives, the RCMP, and general members.

The Design Panel made the following recommendations:

• Review additional noise mitigation measures for the patios, including the potential for vertical elements
• Consider a refresh of the existing landscaped areas
• Provide more design interest to the 200 Street elevation, and the wood façade adjacent to the seasonal patio in particular, such as through the use of branding, vertical landscaping, or additional architectural features
• Review the security of the seasonal outdoor patio, including the use of physical barriers
• Consider adjusting the accessible parking space-adjacent landscape strip, such as replacing it with a concrete seat wall
• Provide an additional accessible parking space

Based on the feedback from the Design Panel, the project’s applicant increased the size of the landscaping strip next to the accessible parking spaces and increased the number of accessible parking spaces from two to three.

The applicant also updated the 200th Street frontage of the building.

Below is the initially proposed design.

The original design of the building fronting 200th Street. Select the image to enlarge.

The following is the updated design.

Updated design of building fronting 200th Street. Select the image to enlarge.

I was happy to see the building better integrated with 200th Street with the updated design. While this part of town is a typical shopping mall today, with SkyTrain coming, this area will become more walkable if it follows the trajectory of other mall sites by SkyTrain stations in our region. It is good to start building walkable, urban-designed buildings today in preparation.