Esquimalt has approved rezoning for a 17-unit apartment building on one of the last remaining single-family house lots on an otherwise medium-density street.
Council voted 5-2 in favour of a staff recommendation to approve rezoning for the four-storey apartment building at 734 Sea Terrace in West Bay even as more than a dozen people from a neighbourhood group spoke in opposition at a public hearing.
Concerns about the project largely centred around the building’s height, massing and setback. People also spoke about potential damage to mature trees on the lot as well as impacts to resident parking and traffic.
Councillors Darlene Rotchford and Tim Morrison voted against the rezoning.
Valerie Hostetler, a member of the Friends of Sea Terrace, said she is disappointed by the decision.
The four-storey building represented “radical densification” that did not suit the character of the street, she said. “We would have happily supported seven townhouses on this unit.”
Originally intended as a five-storey, 19-unit building when it first came to council, the building plans for 734 Sea Terrace have been reduced to four storeys, and the total units in the building decreased by two after council voted it down last year and asked the developer to come back with a modified plan.
Hostetler pointed to a sixplex at 633 Belton Ave. in Vic West as the type of development that would be better for the Sea Terrace site.
But Ryan Jabs, the developer of the sixplex, wrote to council in support of the Sea Terrace project, saying that his sixplex had faced a fair amount of opposition from people who had used language similar to what’s being used to oppose the 734 Sea Terrace proposal.
Jabs said he felt compelled to weigh in and support the project after he heard that a group was using his development as an example of the appropriate amount of density.
Councils can have a tough job saying yes to housing when faced with resident opposition to new housing in a public hearing, he said. “But we need to see a lot more homes approved if we want to address our growing housing crisis.”
Jabs said he’s had a proposed four-storey apartment building with an onsite coffee shop on Craigflower Road shot down by Esquimalt council before it could go to a public hearing, forcing him to revise the project to three storeys.
Delays and uncertainty is expensive, he said, adding that he would’ve likely gone out of the business if his first project proposal had a delay that long.
“There’s other opportunities in Victoria,” he said. “They’re looking for the type of small density that I do.”
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