District of Squamish council played to a standing-room-only crowd at the Eagle Eye Theatre Tuesday night (June 23) in their debut performance at a "town hall" style meeting.
The unprecedented special council meeting saw more than 200 people fill the theatre, with more standing at the doors.
"We think it's important to have this kind of dialogue more than once every three years," Mayor Greg Gardner said in his opening remarks, adding he was "very pleased" with the capacity crowd.
In the end, more than two dozen citizens took to the microphones to quiz council on a variety of issues, but most particularly the district's recently proposed Sustainability Block, which includes the possibility of apartment towers up to 17 storeys downtown in partnership with property owner Westmana.
District director of planning Cameron Chalmers explained the proposal, which would see the district relax its regular strictures on density in exchange for much more rigorous environmentally sustainable building standards.
Based on those principles, Westmana has made applications for rezoning its property in the area south of Vancouver Street, which could include two towers of up to 13 storeys and one tower of up to 17 storeys.
Chalmers pointed out that the district's S-Block, which came out of the Smart Growth on the Ground program a few years ago, is not specifically calling for those heights, which are significantly different than the four-storey limit in the current Downtown Neighbourhood Plan.
"We're still testing what the tolerance of density will be," Chalmers said."This is kind of the beginning of the process."
Chalmers also urged residents to "not put too much stock in what the buildings look like" based on conceptual drawings submitted by Westmana, which appeared on the front page of The Chief's June 12 issue.
The majority of residents who spoke on the S-Block proposal were concerned with the height.
Local realtor Jasmine Henczel said she likes the S-Block concept but is "really concerned" with the possibility of 17-storey buildings.
"I don't want to see that happen to Squamish," she said, adding that other realtors in Squamish she has spoken to share her concern.
Local resident and architect Amy Stein said the plan was "not contextual in scale" to rest of downtown, saying that four-storey and six-storey buildings would be more appropriate than 17, and was also critical of the architecture portrayed in the conceptual drawings.
"That type of architecture seems more suited to Vancouver and doesn't have a place in Squamish," she said to substantial applause.
At the suggestion of Isobel Banner, Gardner asked for a show-of-hands poll on what people thought was an acceptable building height for the S-Block. Only a handful of people supported either the status quo of four storeys or the idea of 16-storey towers, while the rest seemed split between the idea of a maximum of eight storeys or 12 storeys.
Other speakers expressed concerns about the community's capacity to absorb all the housing being proposed for downtown.
"I see all these 269 units, I see a lot of future developments on Second Avenue and the for sale signs on Second Avenue," said downtown resident Eric Belkin. "When I'm downtown even in my building, it looks like the capacity of tenants is about 50 per cent. There's a lot of empty condos.
"I don't think we should have the motto 'If we build it, they will come.' Who will come?"
About 30 people in the crowd came wearing reflective construction vests, representing concerns of the local building industry.
Brent Snell took to the microphones to explain his concerns about the future of his industry, noting that with the completion of the Sea to Sky Highway project, London Drugs and the Squamish Nation Community Gaming Centre, there will be little to keep local builders employed.
Snell said the community needs to pursue development without losing its trails and amenities.
"I think a town that's only 45 minutes from a major city like Vancouver has to embrace the fact that it's going to be a bedroom community."
Snell also urged council to look into complaints from local developers about the speed with which permits and rezoning are processed by municipal staff.
"You constantly hear, largely that they were tortured through the process of getting development permits," Snell said.
"We should be excited when they come and want to develop in our communities.""Sustainable employment is tied to investor confidence, and timely turnaround is key to that," added long-time resident Allan Barr.
Gardner admitted there had been issues with the speed of development approvals, but noted the volume of applications since the summer of 2003 has been unprecedented.
"Were we ready for that pace of applications? No. In my opinion we couldn't have been ready," he said.
He noted the district is working to set up objective criteria to determine the speed with which projects get their permits.
Serge Merckx, a new resident of Squamish who came from Belgium, encouraged the community to use the current economic downtown to learn ways to do things differently.
"If you're going to process the goose that lays the golden eggs, don't make cat food with it, make foie gras," he said to applause.
Despite the fact that the meeting was extended to 9:30 p.m., making for a more than 12-hour day for councillors, Gardner was clearly enthused about the inaugural public meeting, and said council was looking at having the meetings twice a year in the future.
"From our point of view it's been a really great night," he said. "This is a very special community and its full of passionate people. It's nice to have a conversation at this level. If we have conversations like this we can make better decisions."
