An 11-unit housing development could be coming to Tofino by way of a repurposed warehouse building.
Tofino’s municipal council have given their staff permission to proceed with an applicant who’s proposing to create 12 units of staff rental housing on a 0.29-hectare site at 691 Campbell Street.
The applicant hopes to repurpose an existing warehouse building, currently being used for commercial storage and redevelop a nearby workshop on the property.
In a presentation to council on Dec. 12, the district’s senior planner Alex Lader said 11 units of one and two-bedroom rentals would be built in the ‘L-shaped’ warehouse and the workshop would be turned into a two-bedroom single family dwelling.
He added that short term rentals would be prohibited at the site.
The primary access would be off Campbell Street, though a secondary access driveway is being constructed off Neilson Place that traverses another property owned by the same applicant, according to Lader. The property is located near the southeastern end of the street within the village core and is surrounded by low density residential uses on all sides.
A rendering of the proposal shows the repurposed L-Shaped storage building with an updated facade to allow for patio and balcony space as well as tree landscaping and a playground. Lader said the application is well-aligned “across the board” with the district’s policies, priorities and objectives.
“Relevant objectives within the Vision 2 Action plan include supporting a variety of housing forms and types, supporting small businesses and the local economy and this is through the provision of staff housing in this case,” he said.
He added the project is also an example of sustainable development due to its adaptive re-use of an existing warehouse building.
He also pointed to the town’s Official Community Plan, which encourages compact and higher density residential development within the village area, which the property is in.
“It also lists affordable residential as the highest priority development and encourages compact multi-family brownfield development and infill,” he said.
He said a housing demand study conducted in 2021 showed smaller, denser units and purpose built rental staff housing are among the community’s highest needs.
“It’s within the village core, it has good access to downtown services and amenities as well as close proximity to the Multi-Use Pathway,” he said.
He added though that there is currently limited pedestrian infrastructure to the MUP across Campbell Street, but his report suggests “potential future pedestrian infrastructure may improve this.”
Lader said the property is currently zoned for light industrial uses, so would need to be rezoned to allow for residential purposes, adding the proposed residential use is compatible with the surrounding area.
“This application is about contributing to the community’s supply of affordable rental housing intended for people that are employed by local businesses,” he said. “This design reflects a good mix of unit sizes and also the applicant has signalled preliminary willingness to enter into a housing agreement to formalize restrictions on tenancy and price.”
He noted the site has been cleared and developed already with existing buildings being repurposed, so environmental impacts are expected to be minimal as is the development’s impact on the site’s current form and character.
He said district staff are recommending a preliminary environmental assessment be conducted “to better understand whether there are any site remediation requirements due to the…past use of the property for sort of warehousing purposes and to potentially identify any hazardous materials that would need to be cleaned up.”
He said the applicant is proposing 14 on-site parking stalls, “which is generally in line with our current zoning requirements for multi-family buildings.”
He added a traffic impact assessment would be needed and “likely represents one of the potential challenges for development of this site.”
He noted the district’s water supply represents another potential hurdle and staff would discuss a development covenant with the applicant so that the district retains the right to refuse the issuance of a building permit if it’s determined there’s an insufficient water supply.
Coun. Ali Sawyer asked whether the staff housing units would be available to anyone, or to staff of specific businesses.
“From my understanding, staff housing is housing that’s controlled by a business that then chooses which employees it rents out to, whereas housing that is for local residents is just open and anyone can apply,” Sawyer said. “I’m wondering if the applicant has entered into agreements specifically with other businesses in town to only rent to their employees or if this will be open to a wide range of people who live here, no matter what business they work in.”
Lader said his understanding is that tenancy would be restricted to people who can prove they are employed by any local business.
“This is still really early days in the application. We can have these discussions with the applicant as the application progresses,” he said. “Whether or not it’s a specific set list of local businesses or it’s open to any and all businesses, I think that’s something that would still need to be ironed out.”
Mayor Dan Law suggested it is generally considered best practice to protect and preserve industrial zones.
“I noticed a very recent report out of the lower mainland that the loss of industrial zoning to residential zones has become a bit of a crisis,” Law said. “We have very little industrial land in Tofino. How would this loss of industrial land affect Tofino as a whole going forward from a planning perspective?”
Lader responded that he had not “delved into detail” around the balance between the application’s impacts on losing industrial land.
“It’s certainly something that we could look into in our future assessment,” he said. “Really, when we’re reviewing applications, we review them against current and enforced district policies and, in this case, it’s fairly clear at least from the OCP perspective that this area is designated for future housing development. So, in that way, it’s well in alignment with our policies.”
Coun. Kat Thomas said she shared Law’s hesitations on losing industrial space, but also suggested she liked the minimal removal of trees.
“It’s kind of exciting to see a repurposing of a space that doesn’t require us to clear any land because we’re seeing lots of things where we are having to cut down trees and make that trade-off,” she said.
With permission to proceed officially granted, staff will now head into technical assessments and writing a new bylaw for the rezoning requirement with the applicant.
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