Last night the developer of the Anmore South development proposal pulled the plug on their highly controversial application just hours before a Public Hearing on the its Official Community Plan Amendment was about to begin. https://vancouversun.
For those who have not been following this development, it proposed 1,750 single-family, duplex, townhouses and apartments up to six storeys and commercial uses on 150 acres in the small 'semi-rural' village of Anmore. The current population is less than 2500 people.
I have been watching this application for the past ten years for several reasons.
This property was previously owned by Imperial Oil and known as the IOCO Lands. I spent seven years from 2007 to 2014 advising Imperial Oil on this property and an adjacent 80 acres in Port Moody. In 2014, both properties were offered for sale. Although four experienced Vancouver developers put in bids for the 230 acres, the successful bidder was Brilliant Circle Group, a Chinese company headed by David Xiao Ming Cai
Following the purchase, it is my understanding that there was a family dispute within Brilliant Circle, and it was agreed one son would look after the 150 acres in Anmore, and the other son would be responsible for the 80 acres in Port Moody.
While the son who controlled the Port Moody lands decided not to proceed with any planning or development application, the other son Tony Cai, started to plan a major development on the Anmore lands through a company known as Icona.
He hired Greg Moore, the former mayor of Port Coquitlam as the president of this development company and Ekistics as the planning consultant. Eventually two Ekistics planners left the firm and took over the project as Placemark.
Over the years, various plans were prepared for the property which was zoned for one-acre single-family lots.
Initially they proposed 3500 units and a commercial centre. Over time, the proposal was reduced to 1750 units. However, if approved, this would have more than doubled the population of Anmore which is less than 2500 people.
While working for Imperial Oil I got to know the now mayor of Anmore, John McEwen. He is a reasonable and thoughtful person. Over the years, he has been generally supportive of more housing choices and an increase in density and so have the local planning and engineering staff. Icona was encouraged by this and spent a lot of money on planning and engineering studies.
For a while, there appeared to be significant support on Council. However, most Anmore residents were very opposed to such a major increase in density, and organized a very effective campaign in opposition to the proposal. Both Port Moody and Belcarra also opposed the project.
I personally thought the scale of the development application was inappropriate, especially since a new road through Bert Flinn Park required to serve any significant development on the Imperial Oil lands was cancelled by Port Moody after the sale. I also questioned the financial viability of what was being proposed and didn't expect Metro Vancouver to approve such a major change in density since the access along Ioco Road was constricted and it would have required a change to the Urban Containment Boundary.
I was therefore pleased to wake up to a news report by Justin McElroy on CBC announcing that the developer had withdrawn the application in response to the community opposition. Details of the proposal and a recent statement by Greg Moore can be found here. https://anmoresouth.com/
Somewhat coincidentally, I was involved in a similar scenario in 1989 related to what were then known as the Spetifore Lands in Delta. This 753 acre property also had a highly controversial history. Rather than attempt to tell the whole story, it is well summarized in this Delta Optimist story. One key difference is that Icona withdrew their application before the public hearing began. I had to endure 26 nights of public hearings before our application was withdrawn!
1 comment:
Best way to make the Ioco lands work from a mobility perspective would be to extend the SFU gondola down the north side of Burnaby Mountain to a new West Coast Express station, then across the inlet and over northeast to Ioco. Would obviously still need the road connections as well, but would entirely reposition the site as SFU adjacent, with an express connection to downtown Vancouver (particularly if WCE could run better frequencies as an express alternative to the SkyTrain between Vancouver and Coquitlam)...
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