District of North Vancouver council has given its OK for a major condo and townhouse project in the Lynn Creek neighbourhood, including what will be the third tallest tower on the North Shore.
Council voted 5-2 Monday night to approve Intergulf Development’s plan for 16- and 27-storey towers on Hunter Street at Mountain Highway. In total, it will bring 326 condo and townhouse units to the area, plus a new community centre to serve the fledgling neighbourhood. Lost to redevelopment will be 13 businesses in the light industrial lots on Hunter Street.
Under the agreement, Intergulf will put up the land and build the shell of a three-storey, 28,000-square-foot community centre covering all but $2.5 million of the $10.8 million cost. The district would be required to spend another $4.5 million to outfit the community centre’s interior, although much of that cash is already set aside in reserves. The community centre must be completed before the residential towers can be built.
Of the 326 new residences, 198 will have two bedrooms and 13 will have three bedrooms. The remainder are either one-bedroom units or studio apartments.
The emerging Lynn Creek town centre is one of four areas targeted for development in the district’s official community plan.
“The model for the new area, I think, fits in well,” said Coun. Robin Hicks. “We have to accommodate a certain amount of population coming into the district and this one has been designed as a town centre and it’s on a bus route.”
The plan dovetails with planned improvements to Seylynn Park, which will be key to the success of the neighbourhood, Coun. Mathew Bond said.
“I think as we continue to live in a denser city, it becomes more and more important to provide these types of benefits, (such as) a community centre, for the approximately 5,000 residents who will come to live in this area over the next 10 to 15 years,” he said.
The two dissenting votes came from Couns. Lisa Muri and Jim Hanson, largely on the grounds that it would further eat away at the district’s employment-generating light-industrial land base. Muri said council was drifting too far from its goals of being an affordable place to live and work.
“This was a blue collar community and we have to keep that (eclecticism) of the community to make it rich and be better than it has been in the past. It was awesome in the past. Change is hard. It’s awkward. But we can always do better and I don’t think we should be pushing businesses out for the sake of anything,” she said.
