Two developers say they’ll consider legal action against the City of Prince George if the draft Official Community Plan is passed as-is and two city councillors are calling for the March 19 public hearing to be postponed.
Developer Will Dong told The Citizen that he purchased the property 4729 Shamrock Rd. in the Hart three years ago and has been working towards building around 550 housing units on the property.
Another developer, Nav Aulakh, said his company purchased nearby 2913 Silvercrest Rd. about a year and a half ago and has been working on plans to develop up to 240 housing units in phases.
Both men said they thought their work with the city’s planning department was going well until they found out that the draft OCP currently going through the approval process before city council would see their properties removed from the urban containment boundary.
Under the OCP, the city discourages the “further intensification of urban uses and densities on lands outside of the Urban Containment Boundary” as well as “further subdivision (both infill and new multi-lot development) or development of properties outside of the Urban Containment Boundary that are urban in density and may warrant an urban level of servicing.”
“I purchased my property three years ago because the current effective OCP supported 22 units per hectare,” Dong said. “I had a concept development plan (for) about 550 units and I presented that to the city’s planning department last July and … in the meanwhile they did not tell me anything about the potential OCP change.”
Dong said that in January of this year, he sent an email to the planning department asking if there were any impending zoning or OCP changes and was told there weren’t.
He said that felt strange to him as in the other municipalities he develops in the Lower Mainland and Vancouver Island, there were discussions surrounding their plans and their needs to meet the province’s mandated housing targets.
He said he didn’t find out about the situation until a few weeks after, when an internet search turned out news stories about Prince George’s new draft OCP and he saw on provided maps that his properties had been placed outside of the Urban Containment Boundary.
Though the OCP can be amended, Dong said he didn’t think council would approve changes to the boundary in the future.
Many of his neighbours, he said, didn’t know their properties were similarly affected until he started reaching out to them.
That included Aulakh, who said in a phone interview from the Abbotsford area that he has been working with the city to create a development plan for the property.
“We bought the project taking into consideration the development potential of the project,” Aulakh said.
Aulakh said he had submitted an initial plan to build more than 60 single-family homes and the last time he spoke with his contact in the planning department, he was excited to hear that under BC’s small-scale, multi-unit housing legislation, his company would be able to build duplexes in the subdivision.
He said he found out that his property was being shifted out of the Urban Containment Boundary on Jan. 31, but he couldn’t deal with the issue properly until last week because he was out of the country.
Both developers said they have been reaching out to the city and city council to air their concerns about the changes in the OCP and would like them addressed before the plan is officially adopted.
If the plan goes ahead unchanged, the developers said it would lower their property values and make the plots difficult to sell. In such a case, they said, they are considering taking legal action against the city over what they see as a lack of consultation.
Because of the issues over consultation, including these developers’ concerns, councillors Trudy Klassen and Brian Skakun told The Citizen that they advocated for the March 19 public hearing to be postponed, though they said it was still going ahead.
Klassen had previously called for more consultation before moving forward with the OCP at previous council meetings, voting against first and second reading of the bylaw establishing the new plan.
“I voted against both readings because I knew of (Dong’s) concerns, I knew of a few others that had already emailed us,” Klassen said.
She said she felt both the consultation on the OCP as well as the public notice given ahead of time for it were inadequate. She said there should have been three or four draft versions and more sit-down meetings before passing the bylaw.
“To be voting on it now is like we’re three or four steps ahead of ourselves, we shouldn’t be voting on the OCP yet,” she said.
On the Urban Containment Boundary, Klassen said she’s heard feedback that Prince George has a lack of available industrial lands and by restricting the boundary, the city is obliterating its chance to grow.
“My biggest worry is actually not even the legal action,” Klassen said. “My biggest worry is that our city is developing a reputation of making it difficult for builders, for developers to build and grow our city.”
Skakun said he had reviewed case law of litigation against local governments over OCPs where they were found liable over a lack of consultation and was worried this could make Prince George vulnerable in court.
He said he felt the city could have done a better job with consultation, citing a conversation he had with a mobile home park developer who said he found out just earlier this week that his property was being taken out of the Urban Containment Boundary.
For the public hearing, Skakun said he is planning to put forward a motion to have the boundary remain the same as it was in the existing 2012 OCP until affected developers can be consulted, along with others.
He said he believed that third reading of the OCP bylaw, which is scheduled to take place after the public hearing, wouldn’t go through due to these concerns as well as those raised by Ginter’s Green Forever about protections for that greenspace.
Mayor Simon Yu told The Citizen that he has similar concerns, but that there was no mechanism to postpone the public hearing and wanted it to go ahead.
“We will hear from the developers affected and the citizens and then if the councillors wish that they need some major amendments taking place, then council has the option to amend it one at a time or they can rescind the motion they passed in the previous meeting and send this back to the drawing board,” Yu said.
During the hearing, he said council would be able to hear both why the developers are concerned as well as why administration is proposing that the boundary be changed.
Yu said he was also worried about the potential legal consequences if the current draft plan is passed.
“It’s always concerning as the head of the city because the taxpayer might be exposed to the liability,” he said.
