In a sharply divided vote, a majority of White Rock council has opted to pursue community hub Option 3A – which would create a new multiple-use building in the uptown area.
The specific site under study is 1510 Johnston Rd. (next to the Oceana PARC Playhouse); formerly an Imperial Oil gas station and latterly an unpaved public parking lot after being expropriated by the city in 2018 to create a 'town square' park.
In a report presented to council Jan. 27, chief administrative officer Guillermo Ferrero said the proposed hub building – which would need to cover 80 per cent of the site, according to economic studies conducted by consultants Urban Systems in identifying community hub options – could be 12 storeys or, depending on other facilities the city may wish to include, as high as 25 storeys.
Ferrero is initially suggesting a 12-storey building which would provide a sorely needed replacement city hall, plus library and daycare, along with commercial space and other amenities.
But he said council may also wish to consider increasing the height of the building to incorporate affordable housing and additional facilities, such as a seniors' centre (the current Kent Street facility is also aging out) and Sources' Foundry project, an initiative that – following the lead of other communities – centralizes the full range of services available to youth in a single location.
Although the cost of underground parking for the development has yet to be figured into estimates, Ferrero said the development (currently priced at $42.88 million) could be financed from reserves which will total $20.5 million at year's end and by leveraging the value of existing city real estate, including the current city hall, library, daycare and annex, along with a water facility yard at Buena Vista Avenue and Oxford Street.
"After everything's paid for, no tax dollars are going into this," Mayor Megan Knight noted. "We're actually ahead of the game."
Council opinion was predictably divided, with Knight and city councilors Elaine Cheung, Michele Partridge and Bill Lawrence in favour of the outlined proposal, and councillors Christopher Trevelyan and David Chesney opposed to both the location and scale of the suggested development. (Coun. Ernie Klassen, who attended part of the meeting prior to the vote remotely, also made it clear that he was not prepared to endorse Option 3A without further study.)
Proponents said supporting the project was a matter of supporting a vision for the future of White Rock and coming generations of residents and visitors, and moving forward before infrastructure costs become prohibitive; while opponents – though noting the need for a new city hall is evident and proposed inclusions (such as the Foundry project) were worthy – questioned the level of ambition such a building would represent for a small community, and the size of the footprint selected.
Council ultimately voted to support the location (Trevelyan and Chesney opposed); to direct staff to do further analysis of including affordable housing (unanimous); to direct staff to approach Sources about incorporating the Foundry project in the community hub (unanimous); to start discussions with library staff about the site (unanimous); to direct staff to begin a public consultation process, with results referred to the Community Hub Committee for more discussion and recommendations to council (unanimous) and to initiate Official Community Plan and zoning amendments for all necessary sites to make the project viable (Trevelyan and Chesney opposed).
Knight said she views the Foundry project as a "great" addition to the community hub.
"Number one, we're going to have child care; we're trying to incorporate the seniors' centre, now, if we have youth, we've got a whole community building that's serving every age group."
"The only scenario that makes sense is moving city hall to uptown White Rock," Cheung said. She added that objections raised about selling city property didn't take into account the residential component of the scheme.
"Selling city property is about (building) housing. What do we need? Housing," she said.
"Every one of us voted for a community hub as (council's) top strategic priority. How did they think this was going to happen? How is it going to materialize if we're not going to do anything or sell anything? We're supposed to govern for now and into the future. Not just for the loud naysayers – we have to have the courage to move forward for the children, for our grandkids."
While he was strongly in favour of making the Foundry project part of the community hub, Klassen said he would also like to see more 'supportive' housing (addressing the unhoused) as well as 'affordable' housing as part of the proposal and added he would want more community consultation before he was prepared to endorse the option.
Chesney said that while he and the rest of council voted for a new community hub the current city hall site (including annex, library and daycare) is "a huge footprint of land."
"I don't think we've ever explored the possibilities. The majority of this council has decided it should go uptown to a tower, and as a result of that I think we're trying to jam so much into a 12-to-16-storey tower into a really small footprint. ... We'll see what the community thinks. I hope the community speaks loud and clear.
"Given the pushback against highrises in this community, I don't think the community is going to raise its hand and say, sure, let's put our community hub in a highrise."
"We need to finalize a location and move forward," said Partridge. "Right now our businesses are suffering because they don't have enough customers. We don't have enough varied density for the future."
But Trevelyan said that selling off all the city's land resources for "two to three storeys in someone else's building" is not the right direction for a small city.
"At the end of the day the driving force for this really is a new city hall and all the other nice things, the Foundry and all that, are, in my opinion, an add-on to sweeten the pot.
"They're all great things for the city – I'm not denying that. I think it would be a lot better, given the City of White Rock's size, to build a modest building, knock down the annex, keep the city hall going, build an easy two-three-storey (building). Sell off the property uptown, that little tiny spot, keep public land for the future. Build more office space for maybe 30 or 40 more workers for the city."
