Tag: politics

Port Moody ponders future growth, need for amenities and infrastructure

Port Moody councillors say they will continue to advocate for more support from senior levels of government to construct infrastructure like schools and recreation facilities as the city faces increasing pressure to meet housing targets imposed by the province.

But that did little to ease the concerns of residents speaking at a special town hall about Port Moody’s new draft official community plan (OCP) held at the Inlet Theatre on Monday, Sept. 15.

Several said they fear what Port Moody will look like as its population continues to swell to more than 74,000 by 2050.

“We might not have the infrastructure to accommodate that growth,” said one.

“Port Moody isn’t ready for this much density,” said another.

Some residents fretted about insufficient roads and parking spaces, while one offered even transit won’t be able to keep pace with demand.

‘Unrecognizable’

Former councillor Steve Milani said though the draft document falls short in addressing the city’s economic needs. He said the plan will “transform Port Moody into something unrecognizable.”

The draft OCP is a roadmap for the city’s growth and aspirations for the next 25 years. It guides planning and land use decisions and policies as well as the provision of services and infrastructure.

A community’s OCP must be updated every five years.

Port Moody initiated its current draft update in 2020 with a series of virtual visioning workshops followed by an initial community survey in January, 2021.

Since then, there has been three more surveys as well as several workshops and open houses. A previous town hall held in April attracted 50 attendees, prompting a call from Coun. Haven Lurbiecki for a subsequent gathering with councillors in attendance along with support from senior staff.

Not set in stone

Coun. Samantha Agtarap said none of the provisions in the OCP are set in stone.

“This is an idea of what the city might look like 20 years into the future,” she said. “It doesn’t mean it’s going to happen. Things can and do change.”

Coun. Diana Dilworth said it will be incumbent upon council to work with the provincial government to ensure amenities keep pace with population growth.

“We’ve heard a lot of concerns about infrastructure,” she said. “This gives 25 years for whoever sits at this council table to demand the provincial government provide those things if they want housing.”

Coun. Callan Morrison agreed.

“We continue to advocate to higher levels of government for the best interests of our residents,” he said.

OCP vision

Port Moody’s draft OCP update envisions a vibrant community that is safe, inclusive, resilient and carbon neutral. Its unique and complete neighbourhoods are connected by an active transportation network and the city’s residents value its natural environs, heritage character, arts and culture.

To achieve those goals, said the document, Port Moody must promote sustainable transportation, compact, energy-efficient development, protect and restore its urban forests and other environmentally sensitive areas. The city must also expand its parkland supply while providing residents a range of housing options, including rental stock, that is well-served by transit, cycling and pedestrian infrastructure, as well as amenities like schools, civic facilities, commercial spaces and employment opportunities.

Some of the draft OCP’s substantive updates include:

  • building heights from 26 to 39 storeys in the neighbourhood immediately around the Moody Centre transit station
  • expansion of the Inlet Center neighbourhood to Dewdney Trunk Road
  • the establishment of three new special study areas to better identify the impacts and opportunities of their growth:
  • south of St. Johns Street, from the Coquitlam border to Clarke Road
  • the Suncor lands
  • industrial properties along Murray Street
  • increasing the city’s tree canopy coverage from 29 to 31 per cent
  • collaboration with neighbouring communities to address wildlife conflict
  • greater consideration for dog amenities to be a component of new development

Mayor Meghan Lahti said the document is “the culmination of several years of input” from the community.

Residents alienated

But Lurbiecki worried the relatively low turnout at the two town halls indicates residents are feeling alienated from the process.

“This plan doesn’t reflect their vision and they’re not engaged,” she said.

In a report, Port Moody’s manager of policy planning, Mary De Paoli, said the document will be considered by the city’s land use committee in early October before returning to council for first and second readings by the middle of that month.

It will then be referred to external agencies like Metro Vancouver for further comment before a public hearing in December.

De Paoli said if nothing distracts from that timeline, final adoption could occur by March, 2026.

 

by Categories: UncategorizedTags: , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Could the Shoreline Shuttle roll back into Port Moody?

Port Moody’s Shoreline Shuttle could be making a comeback.

Mayor Meghan Lahti says the free service that connected the city’s Inlet Centre area to Rocky Point Park, Brewers Row and the downtown heritage district for the summer in 2018 but then was deemed too expensive, could be paid for with revenue from paid parking.

Council will debate Lahti’s motion to revive the service at its meeting on Tuesday, June 10.

In a report, the mayor said the shuttle service would reduce traffic congestion, improve safety for pedestrians and improve air quality.

“Perhaps more important though,” said Lahti, “ensuring that transportation to the busy area is accessible to everyone, regardless of economic status, will promote inclusivity and enhance community engagement.”

Lahti said money from the city’s parking reserve fund could be used to relaunch the service, As of Dec., 2024, that amounted to $72,500.

The pilot shuttle program in 2018 was budgeted to cost $50,000, including the cost of contracting a 20-passenger bus and the installation of signs for its 13 stops. The service ran every 30 minutes on weekend afternoons and evenings until midnight on Fridays and Saturdays and 10 p.m. on Sundays. Adjustments were made to accommodate extra demand during events like RibFest, Canada Day and car-free day.

Despite a $20,000 subsidy from Richmond-based developer Panatch Group to operate the shuttle, council decided in 2019 it was too expensive to continue the pilot. A report estimated the 3,700 rides ended up costing $13.50 per passenger.

Rob Vagramov, Port Moody’s mayor at the time, said it would have been cheaper to put every passenger in a taxi or limo instead.

“Not every idea pans out exactly as we’d hoped,” he said.

Lahti said now that the city is charging for parking in busy areas like Rocky Point Park, along Murray Street and around Eagle Ridge Hospital, a portion of revenues could support relaunching the shuttle service.

“By utilizing pay parking revenue for this shuttle, the community directly benefits from the fees paid by users,” she said in her report. “It creates a sense of accountability and transparency about how the funds are being used.”

According to the report, the pay parking stations generated $158,120.70 in gross revenue since they were implemented midway through Sept., 2024 through March, 2025.

by Categories: UncategorizedTags: , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Could Port Moody’s biggest-ever development project get even bigger?

The company building Port Moody’s largest-ever development project wants to make it even bigger.

Dean Johnson, the vice-president of development for Vancouver-based Wesgroup Properties, told council’s city initiatives and planning committee Tuesday, May 20, that it will need to add a seventh residential tower to the six already approved as part of its expansive 14.8-acre Inlet District project in the former Coronation Park neighbourhood.

Johnson said the additional density is required to offset recent changes to rules about development cost charges (DCCs) levied by Metro Vancouver that help pay for regional infrastructure like water, sewers and drainage.

He said those changes will cost the company an additional $30 million for its Inlet District development that currently comprises more than 2,500 new homes in six residential towers up to 31 storeys along with three low-rise buildings, a four-storey office building, as well as a grocery store and daycare facility, all built around a 2.5-acre central park.

“This cost is something we have to deal with in this project,” Johnson said, adding it was unforeseen last July, when Wesgroup achieved final approval from council for the zoning amendments required for the development’s first phase to proceed.

Johnson said if the company can’t build an additional tower, it may have to cut back on some of the project’s amenities to help offset its increased costs. Those include:

  • $6 million towards construction of a new pedestrian overpass across Ioco Road to the Inlet Centre SkyTrain station
  • a 186 sq. m. civic facility for community use
  • $4.8 million of public art
  • more than $8 million in community amenity contributions

Johnson said the seventh tower would be part of a future phase of the project’s construction, which is already underway and is expected to take about 25 years to complete.

Johnson’s preliminary pitch rankled at least one Port Moody councillor.

Haven Lurbiecki said it’s “irresponsible” and accused the developer of “moving the goalposts now.”

At one point during the project’s protracted journey through council’s approval process that commenced when Wesgroup finished acquiring the last of 59 mid-century single-family homes that formerly occupied the site in 2019, the company had hurled a similar charge.

In 2022, Wesgroup’s senior development manager, Evan French, expressed frustration at Port Moody’s implementation of a new inclusionary zoning policy that requires at least 15 per cent of units in dense new developments be affordable rentals shortly after it had received approvals for changes to the city’s official community plan so the project could proceed and just as it was preparing to apply for necessary zoning amendments.

And while those zoning amendments were ultimately passed by council in Dec., 2023, without a requirement for affordable housing units, Wesgroup did provide a letter of intent that it would continue working to secure such a component.

Tuesday, Johnson said those efforts have borne some fruit.

He said a program through the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation that provides low-cost financing for the construction of affordable apartments could mean all 288 units in the project’s second tower could become rental apartments, with 20 per cent of them available at below-market rates.

Johnson said Wesgroup had previously tapped into the program for projects it built in other communities like Burnaby and New Westminster.

“We are very familiar with this framework and we’re really excited about bringing this to Port Moody.”

But, Johnson added, time is running short and an endorsement letter from the city would speed the process, a request councillors readily granted.

by Categories: UncategorizedTags: , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Union says B.C. premier can help end the ‘crapification’ of local news

A union that represents journalists at several British Columbia media outlets says the provincial government needs to do more to prevent the spreading of news deserts as publications are closed.

Lana Payne, the national president of Unifor, and its western regional director, Gavin McGarrigle, said in a letter to B.C. Premier David Eby that great swaths of the country are being left without a local news source, hurting democracy.

They’re urging Eby to help reverse that trend by committing a portion of the provincial government’s advertising budget to support local news.

Last summer, Ontario Premier Doug Ford directed crown corporations like the Liquor Control Board of Ontario and the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation to spend at least 25 per cent of their advertising budgets at news outlets based in that province.

Since 2021, New York City has required its agencies to direct 50 per cent of their advertising budgets to community and multicultural media outlets, including print, digital, radio and television.

Losing ‘scarce’ ad dollars

In their letter, Payne and McGarrigle said a similar directive by the provincial government “would immediately get badly needed revenue to news businesses who are losing scarce ad dollars to American and Chinese Big Tech firms” without spending additional taxpayer dollars.

In February, 2024, Eby called out “corporate vampires” for overseeing “the crapification of local news by laying off journalists” during an announcement in Coquitlam hours after Bell Media announced job cuts and the cancellation of several local newscasts.

Eby said media companies have a “corporate responsibility” to “ensure people get accurate, reliable information in this age of social media craziness.”

On April 17, Glacier Media — now called Lodestar Media — closed the Tri-City News, Burnaby Now and New Westminster Record, leaving more than 600,000 people without a robust, trustworthy source of local news.

Publisher Lara Graham said the publications, that had informed their communities for more than 40 years, were no longer sustainable due to “the industry’s ongoing financial challenges.”

The closures came 20 months after all three publications ceased their weekly print editions to exist only online.

Two days earlier, Port Moody council approved an expenditure of $50,000 this year and an $85,000 budget item next year to bolster its communications resources to help fill the growing “information gap” in the community and counter disinformation spread on social media channels.

Cross-Canada closures

According to the Public Policy Forum, more than 340 communities across Canada have lost local news providers since 2008.

An annual injection of $100 million for each of the next five years from online search engine Google as a result of Canada’s Online News Act that was passed in June, 2023, by the federal Liberal government with support from the NDP hasn’t done much to prevent closures either.

Two weeks after Glacier Media’s closed its three publications, the Canadian Journalism Collective that is responsible for disbursing the funds announced the company had received an instalment of almost $400,000 based upon the number of staff dedicated to the production of news it had on its payroll in 2023. Metroland Media Group in Ontario received more than $1.9 million despite filing for bankruptcy protection in Sept., 2023, and ceasing production of all 70 of its weekly community newspapers to move them exclusively online; 605 employees lost their jobs.

During a visit to Port Moody campaigning for April’s federal election, former NDP leader Jagmeet Singh conceded the Online News Act could use further refinement.

The legislation “did not have the teeth” to prevent more media closures, said Singh. “I want to see more protections in place against web giants that are taking up all the space.”

Unifor, which represents workers at Glacier’s recently shuttered publications, said B.C.’s Extended Producer Responsibility fees that make producers of plastics and packaging pay for their recycling also stacks the deck against local news outlets.

“The only catch is that newspapers are not packaging,” said Payne and McGarrigle in their letter to Eby. “They are the product — an important product that is already the most widely and most successful recycling material.”

The union said B.C. should follow the lead of Ontario, which exempted newspapers from the fee in 2022.

“The extra burden of this program on newspaper publishers will only create costs that cannot be afforded by an industry already stretched and facing so many obstacles,” said Payne and McGarrigle.

by Categories: UncategorizedTags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

The struggle for affordable housing and what it meant when a Coquitlam woman found it

This story was originally published in the Tri-City News Nov. 10, 2024

Frances Stone had never lived in a home that requires a security fob or a building that has an elevator.

Recently, she and her teenage daughter moved into a gleaming two-bedroom-plus-den condo in Anthem Properties’ new SOCO project just off North Road in Coquitlam.

How Stone got there is a study in transformational importance of securing safe, affordable housing.

Stone and her daughter were living in a walk-up rental building in uptown New Westminster when her landlord informed her she needed to move so a family member could move in.

Stone, an addictions counsellor, considered uprooting to Alberta where the provincial government is offering financial incentives to newcomers and rents are much cheaper.

Then a friend told her about a partnership between the Affordable Housing Society and Vancouver-based developer Anthem Properties that would make 18 rental homes in two new condo towers in Coquitlam available at rates geared to tenants’ income.

According to the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp.(CMHC), that means a tenant pays 30 per cent or less of their gross income for rent.

Secure future

Stone said since moving into her new home in August, it’s the first time in her adult life she’s felt secure about her future.

So much so, Stone said she’s in the final stages of adopting a rescue dog to add to her family, something she’s wanted to do for years but failed to pursue because of her ongoing housing uncertainty.

That’s music to the ears of Stephen Bennett, CEO of the Affordable Housing Society.

He said being able to live in a safe, affordable home impacts every aspect of a person’s life.

“We don’t understand what a lack of choice means for people,” he said. “Because it’s so unaffordable out there, people are stuck.”

Best interests of the community

As municipalities across B.C. strive to attain housing targets recently mandated by the provincial government, they’re also wrestling with the challenge of ensuring those homes can be accessed by a broad spectrum of residents.

“We still have to predicate all of our decisions based on what is in the best interest of our community as a whole,” said Port Moody Mayor Meghan Lahti about the pressure to approve the construction of more homes.

Bennett said affordability can only be achieved when all levels of government work together to provide necessary funding because the cost of constructing homes has spiralled so high. He said without subsidies and grants from programs through agencies like BC Housing, BC Builds and CMHC, rent for apartments could be as much as $5,000 a month.

‘It can often be a tightrope’

Melissa Howey, Anthem’s vice-president of development, said companies like hers are feeling the pressure as well, as they look to deliver housing stock that meets communities’ needs.

“It is balancing the costs, the availability of density,” she said. “It can often be a tightrope to walk.”

Howey said inflationary pressures and constraints on capital are making that tightrope even tauter.

Inclusionary zoning policies and negotiations for additional density can help spur developers to find creative solutions that will allow them to include affordable units in their projects, but the long process to get approvals means the landscape is always shifting.

“Every municipality operates differently,” Howey said, adding the navigation of those varying procedures comes with more layers of expense.

“It can be a challenge to deliver the other forms of housing in a project at somewhat affordable rates.”

In fact, Anthem recently had to scale back a plan to designate half the 128 units in a rental building its seeking to build in Port Moody to just 13. The company said its original intent proved “financially unviable.”

Complicated process

Bennett said his society is always working to devise new models to help fund affordable units, sometimes pooling financial contributions from several agencies.

But, he said, “to pull all those pieces together is exceedingly complicated and it takes a lot of work.”

Stone said she’s keenly aware of the challenge to provide enough affordable housing.

Prior to losing her apartment in New Westminster, she’d been on the BC Housing waiting list for five years. She said she’d also applied to every co-op in Metro Vancouver but “nothing was available.”

“It was pretty hopeless,” Stone said.

Now that she’s settled in her new home, though, Stone is starting to take advantage of her building’s host of luxurious amenities, like its indoor basketball/badminton court, the games and community room that features a full kitchen, a gym and yoga studio as well as an outdoor garden atop the parkade with seating areas, play structures and several gas barbecues. She said she’s keen to start a podcast that she can record in the building’s special sound room as well.

It’s a lifestyle Stone never imagined for herself.

“I would never have been able to work hard enough to live in a building like this,” she said. “It changes your perception of yourself.”

by Categories: UncategorizedTags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment