By Sebastian Kanally, Times Chronicle
More higher density housing is coming to Oliver as Council approved another three-storey apartment building.
The proposed three-storey building will have 12 total rental units including six one-bedroom units and six two-bedroom units.
The building, approved for 6480 Park Drive in Oliver, required council approval because the developer sought to reduce the minimum required off-street parking spaces from 1.5 per unit to 1.2 spaces per unit.
The town recently adopted Zoning Bylaw 1423 which increased off-street parking requirements to 1.5 spaces per unit, regardless of the number of bedrooms, plus 0.2 spaces for visitor parking. This new bylaw requires 20 parking spaces for the proposed building.
The town’s previous bylaw required only one parking space for one and two-bedroom units. So if this application had been brought before council just a few months ago, they would have only been required to build 14 total spaces.
Council agreed with the town staff’s reasoning that since the building will have only one and two-bedroom units, then “several of the residents are likely to have only one vehicle”.
Also, the report to council notes there is ample street parking across the road on Park Drive to handle any overflow.
Councillor Petra Veintimilla noted that she supports the request because “we are being left with more parking than we would have had a couple months ago.”
She explained this while also pointing out that “as much as possible we want to avoid encouraging people to park on the streets because our streets will become overly crowded pretty quickly.”
Councillor David Mattes also commented that as a council they have approved a few proposals similar to this one that reduce the minimum off street parking spaces. He went on to suggest that in the future they look around town, and see whether similar types of buildings actually use on-street parking.
As for the building itself, it will be pushed right up against the slope at the back of the property with a higher elevation, which would make it closer to the back of the lot near Eastside Road.
Now that the proposal has been approved, the developer will provide more detailed drawings and landscape plans for a future development permit application to move the proposal forward.
The application to reduce off street parking comes on the heels of extensive council discussion on these requirements in response to the province’s Provincial Small-Scale Multi-Unit Housing (SSMUH) legislation.
Requiring off-street parking is a large obstacle for developers, so the province is trying to push reductions in these requirements in bylaws to encourage development in towns around the province.
