A consortium of property owners and developers will hold two open houses this week to share its preliminary concepts for Port Moody’s downtown adjacent to the Moody Centre SkyTrain station.
The first open house is Wednesday, Oct. 30 from 4 to 7 p.m. at 3020 Spring St. A second open house will be held Saturday, Nov. 2 from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. in the gym at Moody elementary school (2717 St. Johns St.).
The consortium, which has been working on its plan with city staff for almost two years, unveiled its ideas for the 23-acre collection of properties that runs from St. Johns Street to the SkyTrain tracks, and from Moody to Buller streets, in a series of workshops for invited stakeholders at the end of September. It envisions an urban neighbourhood of 3,775 homes as well as retail, office and light industrial spaces that could employ up to 1,400 people.
Virendra Kaiilanpur, the associate principal of the project’s design consultants, Perkins & Will, said 300 to 385 of the housing units will be market rental and another 79 to 90 will be for below-market rental.
But at a meeting Oct. 8, some members of Port Moody council said that didn’t jibe with their vision for the area, which includes more emphasis on “high-value” employment in the high-tech and educational fields, more affordable housing units and fewer highrises.
Council has now invited representatives of the consortium, which includes Anthem Properties, PCI Group and Beedie Living as well as TransLink and several smaller property owners, to share their ideas at an upcoming meeting of council’s committee of the whole.
Tim Grant of PCI Group told council any effort to curb the process for reimagining the neighbourhood is “premature.”
Coun. Meghan Lahti accused some of her fellow councillors of “hijacking a group process.”
But Coun. Hunter Madsen said the scale of the project and its importance to the city demands a hands-on approach by council.
