Victoria councillors will decide Thursday whether to send a controversial condominium development in the Cook Street Village to public hearing.
Developer Leonard Cole, president of Urban Core Ventures, wants to build four storeys of residential units over ground-floor commercial space at Cook Street and Oliphant Avenue.
But at five storeys, the proposal is seen by some as too big and out of scale for the village, detracting from the area’s ambience and potentially damaging to the existing retail environment.
“It will be rough and tumble, I’m sure,” said Coun. Chris Coleman, council liaison to Fairfield/Gonzales of the meeting.
Coleman said emails to councillors are running about three-to-one in opposition to the project.
“There’s lots of passion, but there’s lots of misinformation out there. I think it’s hard for people to wrap their minds around [it],” Coleman said.
City staff say several revisions have been made to the project, including:
• Each of the five floors has been reduced from the original proposal by about 600 square metres.
• Originally, 60 units had been proposed. The current proposal is for 53 units (the number of junior one-bedroom units has increased to 20 from six).
• A proposed mechanical penthouse has been removed.
• The building height has been reduced by one metre by reducing the main-floor ceiling height by 70 centimetres and the penthouse ceiling height by 30 cm.
• Side and upper-storey setbacks have been increased to reduce the building mass.
• Proposed shed roofs on the fifth floor have been replaced with flat roofs.
• Parking has been reduced to 69 stalls from 73 (50 residential and 19 commercial).
• Additional features have been added. They include a bicycle repair room, a dog wash station, an enlarged recycling room and a space for six scooters with electric charging stations.
The development would replace two small apartment buildings (with a total of nine units), a duplex and a single-family house.
Coleman said the original application has been shrunk “fairly substantially.”
“It’s not going to make everybody happy — and we’re seeing that in the numbers [of emails against].”
George Zador, who lives two blocks away, would welcome the project.
“I’m totally frustrated by the fact that an attractive project like this would take so long, simply because we have a core of people in Fairfield who really would like to turn the clock back and have nothing done to Cook Street,” Zador said.
Cole said he has made “many, many” revisions to the project and just wants to get it to public hearing.
But many residents and businesses remain opposed. Fairfield resident Sid Tafler said 13 Cook Street businesses presented Mayor Lisa Helps with letters in opposition late last week. The business owners, while saying they support development on the site, argue that the proposal is too big and does not provide enough parking to accommodate the extra level of activity it might bring in.
Tafler said some village residents plan to gather about 8:30 outside city hall Thursday morning to speak out against the development, while handing out free “Cook Street Cookies.”
A Cook Street Cookie, he said, is low rise (has no yeast), is affordable (free), has a diversity of ingredients, is enjoyed by all ages, is best when consumed with friends, family and neighbours, contains a pinch of sea salt and another secret ingredient, is baked fresh in the village at Bubby’s Kitchen and is very tasty.
