City of North Vancouver council has approved a pop-up garden retailer for the former TransLink bus depot on East Third Street, but the decision may be sowing seeds of discord in the business community.
Urban Roots Garden Market has been given the go-head to put up temporary tents on the eastern 2,462 square metres of the property for the spring and summer seasons for the next three years.
In 2016, TransLink closed its Third Street bus depot in North Vancouver and moved the buses to the Burnaby Transit Centre.
Urban Roots has been setting up pop-up locations around the Lower Mainland, but at a public meeting immediately prior to the vote, council was urged to reject the East Third Street location.
Leanne Johnson, president of GardenWorks and director for the B.C. Landscape and Nursery Association, said pop-up businesses “take more than they give back,” threatening the viability of year-round businesses, which have much higher costs.
She noted both her business and Dÿkhof Nurseries are making major investments in permanent locations, while providing year-round employment.
Patrick Stafford-Smith, CEO of the North Vancouver Chamber, also urged council not to allow one business to have an unfair advantage over others.
“It certainly pains me to speak against plants and greenery and activity like this in an underutilized part of the community,” he said. “I think if this temporary use permit goes ahead, and the business is allowed to essentially skim the cream from the milk of the prime selling season for business or for garden centres, that would be a real shame.”
It put council in the unusual position of being asked to vote based on issues of business competitiveness rather than whether a proposal was a good use of the land. Ultimately, the majority voted to allow the pop-up garden retailer.
“We have had other land use decisions come before council as well, where a lot of concerns and questions have been raised about the type of business that would be in that location and the products that might be sold or whether it was locally owned, and who they might employ, and those really don't come into play in what we as council have to consider in these situations,” said Coun. Jessica McIlroy. “The landowners have a right and opportunity to bring forward an application for use on their land.”
The vote was not unanimous, however. Couns. Don Bell and Holly Back both voted against the temporary permit.
Bell, who previously supported the idea, called the property, as it is now, “an open scar on the landscape.” But he said the potential negatives didn’t outweigh the positives that would come.
“I would rather see us get TransLink moving ahead on a permanent use of that site so that it improves the character of the neighbourhood and contributes to the neighbourhood on a more continuous basis,” he said.
That sentiment was shared by many on council who said they’d like to see mixed-use residential and commercial zoning on the property with services and retail that would be of use to the burgeoning Moodyville community.
Mayor Linda Buchanan said she appreciated the angst from the gardening and business community, but predicted they may actually benefit from economic spinoffs.
“We did have several people in the community who wrote in to us to say that they would ... like to see this piece of land to be used for that purpose,” she added.
Additionally, TransLink is still trying to recover from the financial losses that came with the pandemic, Buchanan noted.
If the proposal were for more than three years, Buchanan said she would be asking TransLink to hold an open process, allowing multiple businesses to pitch ideas for uses for the land.
