Rossland City Council is moving forward with development concepts for a four-storey building on the Emcon Lot.
Council met to discuss preliminary development concepts for the lot last Thursday, and gave approval for the consultant, CTQ, to proceed with development concepts for a four-storey building with two commercial floors of 1,000 sq. meters each, a third floor with 12 residential units and a fourth, smaller, stepped-back floor with three to six residential units.
“The idea is they’re going to take that, develop a design, a basic design, of what a building like that could look like, and then run the numbers on what it would cost to build something like that,” explained Stacey Lightbourne, city planner.
Jorge Rivas, a structural designer, was the only member of the public to attend the meeting.
He was concerned about the amount of parking shown in all 20 of the preliminary designs provided by CTQ, as well as the decision to consider having four floors.
“If you did have to go to three and a half or four floors — which I hope you don’t because we’re going to lose that uniqueness that we have in Rossland to do something different and not be like a little Kelowna — if you were to do something like that, I think it would be worth considering, not digging down for parking, but just having a parkade in the first floor in some of those buildings,” he said.
Rivas was also concerned about a part of the council document that stated: “If acceptable for Council a fourth residential floor could increase values for the city and the developer/builder. Such a scenario of units with views may attract recreational home buyers (i.e. second homes) too.”
Mayor Kathy Moore also reacted to that part of the memorandum.
“The fact that it said in the report, ‘secondary homes’ or whatever, … I’m like, ‘No, that’s never going to happen,’” she said.
The project is still very much in the initial stages, and Lightbourne explained that the 20 concepts provided by CTQ are based on what’s possible given the current bylaws.
“Council direction was commercial/residential, so that’s what they looked at and given those rules, our bylaw says you need to have this [much] parking for commercial and this much parking for residential. That’s just the rules we have in place right now,” said Lightbourne.
Council will be able to consider bylaw amendments on the lot once a developer comes forward with a proposal, and that process will include public consultation.
The preliminary concept plans can be seen at rossland.ca/sites/default/files/agenda_special-meeting_may-4-_2017-05-04.pdf.