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District of North Vancouver Council was set to have two sets of public hearings Tuesday night July 10th. The first was on a Kiwanis North Shore Housing Society proposal for 106 units of non-profit below-market rental accommodations for seniors at Whiteley Court.
The second was on the proposed development on the Delbrook lands on Queens Road. That hearing never took place due to a fire alarm that cleared the building.
Public hearing interrupted by fire threat
But the first meeting gave a remarkable example of getting people onside with a project that provides a dramatic comparison to what has happened with other projects in the DNV including the Delbrook proposal.
Patrick McLaughlin, chair of the Kiwanis North Shore Housing Society and project architect Greg Voute presented to Council on their activities leading to the proposed seniors housing development. One thing that stood out was the level of contact between the Kiwanis and their neighbours for the project. Consultations led to changes in the design and siting of the project as well as access to the site and park amenities. None of this happened in discussions of the Delbrook site
Clearly, those efforts had an impact as representatives from a neighboring co-op turned out to support the project.
People had a clear understanding of what the project would look like because the project had already gone to the DNV Advisory Design Panel (ADP). The DNV had not planned to send the Delbrook project to the ADP until July 12th, two days after the planned public hearing.
A staff report to Council stated that Council “has made minimizing the impact of construction a key objective and has created a construction management department to oversee implementation of individual developments…A draft construction management plan has been submitted and a final accepted version will be required prior to building permit issuance. No discussion of construction management has taken place with respect to the Delbrook site.
One neighbor had expressed concern about construction traffic and trades parking on the street. Kiwanis went out and found parking for trades parking. None of the speakers following the presentations raised issues of construction management.
Kiwanis dotted their “i”s and crossed their “t”s. They got the community on side. For the DNV this is a welcome and rare example of planning. For the Delbrook site, much of this has not even begun. It is interesting that the DNV has taken these steps for the Whiteley site and not for others including Delbrook.
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