An apartment complex that will occupy almost an entire block in North Vancouver's Maplewood area is on the way.
At a council meeting on July 22, a majority of District of North Vancouver council voted in favour of an application for a mixed-use development with 534 apartments at 2131-2171 Old Dollarton Rd.
Couns. Jim Hanson and Lisa Muri dissented in the vote, expressing displeasure at the amount of density the project would bring to the area, the lack of affordability in the new development and displacement of existing residents on the property.
The residential units will be spread across five, six-storey buildings that will also include a total of 8,640 square feet of commercial space. The apartments will be divided into 358 strata units, 116 market rental and 60 below-market rental units.
Overall, there will be 240 two-bedroom, 231 one-bedroom, 57 three-bedroom and six studio apartments. Among these are live-work units spread across the buildings, 33 in total.
There will be 531 parking spaces for residents, with an additional 55 visitor stalls. The development will have 1,015 bicycle parking spaces.
The application brings $5.6 million in off-site improvements, which include new bike lanes along Old Dollarton Road and Riverside Drive, a new rapid transit stop, two public plazas, undergrounding of hydro infrastructure, as well as a number of upgrades to the pedestrian streetscape.
Applicant QuadReal will pay the district an additional $9.6 million in development cost charges.
The new Maplewood Gardens project will replace a number of existing structures, including low-rise apartments and light industrial businesses.
Staff recommended council approve the proposal, as it aligns with the official community plan for Maplewood Village by providing a mix of residential, commercial and employment spaces.
“The large scale of this development would help foster a vibrant village centre by contributing key gathering places in the heart of the village, and by connecting these places to neighbouring sites through a number of pedestrian and vehicle pathways ” reads the staff report.
New development will do nothing to provide 'desperately' needed workforce housing, councillor says
Expressing general support for the plan, Coun. Herman Mah said his biggest challenge was grappling with the existing 58 rental units that will be demolished on the site.
“I recognize that QuadReal is trying to match it with 60 non-market rentals – probably not quite a one-to-one match by unit type, but it’s a fair attempt,” he said.
“I do acknowledge that people will lose their homes. I balance that with knowing that overall, more people will have homes in this project,” Mah added.
Mah asked the developers if they had considered a phased approach to construction, wherein the rental component could be built first to accommodate displaced tenants hoping to return.
QuadReal director of development Brennan Finley replied that analysis since an earlier version of the proposal failed at council in 2021 showed that phasing construction would add 2.5 years to the timeline.
“Feasibility of the project was no longer possible,” he said. “So we decided to fully enhance our tenant relocation support and really support tenants as best as we could, realizing that it now had to move forward in one phase.”
Coun. Hanson said he couldn't support a project of that size.
“This is already an extremely busy area,” he said. “There’s only two roads out of the Seymour neighbourhood, and we’ve seen what happens when one of those roads is closed due to an accident or other mishap.
“We already currently face critical shortages in healthcare and in our hospital system. Can our schools absorb these new residents before we add this number of persons to this community, 534 units will likely house well over 1,000 new residents,” Hanson continued. “Before we approve projects of this magnitude in this location, I would like to see much better planning for transportation and other critical infrastructure.”
Hanson said the 358 strata units would do nothing to provide the kind of workforce housing that the community “desperately” needs.
If the previous version of the proposal had passed, the project would be near completion and the on-site tenants could move in, Coun. Catherine Pope said.
“Another three years have gone by. Everything gets more expensive,” she said. “We now have a project before us that fits the needs of this community and the OCP and the action plan and the housing needs report."
"It expands the supply of new rental and non-market housing for low-to-medium income tenants and the diversity of housing, including live-work units [and] strata,” Pope said."
