At last night’s council meeting, a series of residents who live along 22nd Ave and Weber Crescent spoke about their opposition to the development of a new apartment in their neighbourhood. The construction would clear a plot of land used by locals as greenspace and replace it with a multifamily housing unit.

“We need to keep this priceless green space as it,” wrote one resident.

“Leave this piece of land untouched,” wrote another.

Several others spoke about the need for wildlife corridors and the importance of trees to an overall neighbourhood.

All good points, but there was a problem: The city has no real power to prevent the property from being developed. The only question was how many new housing units would it provide?

I’ve written about this before, but we’re in a new era for Prince George when developers are actually interested in building things on private properties that have long sat dormant. We’re used to the constant expansion of new neighbourhoods on the outskirts of town, but it’s only been in the last few years that we’ve seen expansion inwards, at least on the scale it’s currently happening.

Along Ginter’s, Foothills, Ospika, University Way, Moore’s Meadow and other official parks there have long been properties that are used by locals as expansions of those parks but actually belong to private developers. “For sale” and “for development” signs that have sat there for decades faded into the background, to the point that many, if not most, people weren’t even concious of them — that is, up until the point that investors started actually deciding to moving forward with these developments and people realized that these aren’t parks, after all.

I’m not being critical or dismissive here — I love these green spaces, too, and there are real benefits to them. The problem is, what is the city supposed to about it? In the case of this particular lot, as is the case for so many others, the land already belongs to private land owners and is already zoned for residential use. In the case of the property discussed last night, the owners were already allowed to build an apartment or condos on the lot — they were just asking if they could built them taller and with smaller units, so it could accomodate more people. As coun. Cori Ramsay put it — the housing is already going in there, the question is how much housing. From that perspective, it makes more sense to maximize the number of units on spaces that are going to be devloped anyways, so there’s less reason to build more units elsewhere. Council could have rejected the ask but that wouldn’t save the lot. It would just provide more incentive for someone to build on another lot somewhere else.

Beyond that, there’s no real legal avenue for the city to tell someone who owns land that has long been zoned for residential property that suddenly they aren’t allowed to use it that way just because people have gotten used to the trees.

Again, I’m not trying to be glib here. I completely sympathize with the loss of something you thought was parkland suddenly becoming an apartment. But I know that when I was looking to buy a hosue, a realtor insisted to us that the greenspace a house we were looking onto would always be there. Fortunately, we didn’t take them at their word because within a year it was bulldozed for new housing. It’s worth taking a look around the spots you love, figuring out what actually is protected, and preparing for what you can do about the spaces that aren’t.

As luck would have it, friend of the newsletter is launching his own weekly dispatch today and his first full issue is connected to what I’ve just written, only it’s focused on the problems of sprawl. Here’s an excerpt from North of Somewhere.

This city is stuck in a Ponzi scheme

Read the rest here.

Also at council…

With a little bit of discussion, council asked staff to move forward with drafts plans around making rules for how councillors set up meetings and get information from city staff, the creation of an arts hall of fame and a framework for advertising openings on city committees.

The biggest division came up when they started discussing using the city’s contingency fund to help out businesses impacted by the downtown explosion in August. At first, everyone was speaking in favour of it but then Brian Skakun expressed concerns about the fairness of giving money to one set of businesses when lots of others have been impacted by negative problems downtown but haven’t received aid. His point was there have been downtown businesses impacted by theft, grafitti, etc who could also use money to help recover but council never came up with emergency funding for them. Trudy Klassen agreed — she understood the inclination to help, but said she’d been contacted by people who operated businesses downtown who wouldn’t qualify for this aid funding who urged her not to support it. There was some discussion about whether it would be more appropriate to extend emergency funding to all downtown businesses, rather than just those impacted by the explosion. Mayor Simon Yu also wondered if it would put council on the hook to help out in other future disasters (it wouldn’t). In the end, the motion to distribute the money was passed with councillors Pollilo, Bennet, Ramsay and Scott in favour and Skakun, Klassen and Yu against (Frizzell and Sampson were absent). I’ll link to the writeups in other media once they are published, probably in tomorrow’s newsletter.

Quick news

• Prince George recorded eight more toxic drug poisoning deaths in August.

• Former UNBC soccer star mourns brother's death from fentanyl.

• Fires at a seniors home and a backyard.

• Prince George Cougars goalie signs with Vancouver Canucks.

• Terry Teegee wins third term as B.C. AFN regional chief.

• Winter tire regulations come into effect on Sunday.

• City tax sales.

• Romantic getaways.

• Events this week: arena hair metal on Wednesday, an author reading on Thursday and a performance from Amy Blanding on Friday.

• They’re not in Prince George, but I have a new favourite baseball team: The Saskatoon Berries.

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