Dear Editor:
Re: EFry gets third reading - one city councillor opposed, The Record, Oct. 24.
Shawn Bayes' (executive director of EFry) inflammatory and wholly untrue pronouncement that the only option that seems acceptable to residents is to "get out of our neighbourhood and go somewhere else" is indicative of the 'us against them' strategy that EFry employed throughout this process.
This attitude coupled with the city's determination to allow this project to go through, at this location, against the overwhelming opposition of the people living in the affected zoning area, is what led to a two-year long fight.
EFry would have you believe they compromised. They did not. EFry has been in our neighbourhood, at an appropriately zoned location, for 15 years.
The simplest, most basic compromise was the one EFRY refused to entertain: Leave the official community plan intact. Leave the RS-1 zoning in place. Choose a suitable, properly zoned (of which they are many), location in nearby Sapperton that will be full supported by the community. The neighbourhood gets to retain its zoning and EFry gets to expand in the community. It was that easy.
Planning staff, city council and EFry all know that as a community, we specifically said, over and over, that EFry did not have to leave the neighbourhood where they are already located. All we asked is that they put their expansion in an appropriately zoned, nearby location. It must be said that EFry's administration staff operated for years out of an office building two blocks away on Columbia Street without a negative impact on the operations in the familiar blue building.
EFry claims the costs have increased substantially. I would suggest they have actually declined as they are now building a three-storey office building (not four) and have simply erased the need for parking by eliminating the costly under-the-lane portion of the parking lot.
Had EFry and the city employed a more conciliatory approach, the building could have been built by now and people housed in it.
The basis of our opposition is and was land use. In allowing a precedent setting OCP change, the city has signalled that our neighbourhood is ripe for developers to pick off one house at a time.
The city tried to suggest that our concerns over commercial or institutional (hospital) expansion along Sherbrooke were unfounded even as the root of our angst can be found in the advisory planning committee minutes from the 'first round' of OCP amendment applications.
Given that the hospital has plenty of its own land to develop, and the Brewery District is flush with commercial and office space that is the least of our concerns.
The developers who would like our area to become the next Metrotown or Brentwood now know that all that is required is to toss in 10 units of non-market housing and the city has their back.
Some councillors, who voted in favour of the land use changes, finally admitted that there is validity to our concerns about the neighbourhood being opened to unwanted redevelopment.
We will be looking to those councillors to insure that our RS-I zoning is retained in the pending OCP review and expect that this is done before the next election.
Catherine Cartwright, New Westminster
