Coquitlam is moving ahead on its vision to make the city a livable one while still providing affordable housing and connecting with transit.
Fraser Mills, Burquitlam, Austin Heights, and Burke Mountain are new neighbourhoods being created from old while the city looks to revitalize and rebuild.
Problem is, those plans might look nice on paper but making them a reality is something else entirely.
A case in point is the Mary Ann Meegan Insurance Agency, which has struggled to rebuild after a fire destroyed the original 40-year-old building last year. The owner understandably wants to re-establish the family business on the original property but, as the owner tells it, has had to conform to new design requirements and jump through a lot of hoops that were unforeseen.
These new design requirements and extra hassles are the result of changes to zoning initiated and approved by council in a plan to turn the sleepy Austin Heights suburban neighbourhood into a more urban place, with high-density towers, transit and walkability.
The thing is these changes were made with the idea that a developer might want to come in and transform whole blocks.
On Monday night, however, council found out that it's not big-time developers that may want to rebuild but some small business owners who, through no fault of their own, simply want what they had before the fire.
What was disheartening to observe, however, was the way council failed to take ownership and responsibility for making the decisions on Austin Heights that created the hardship for this family in the first place. Either through lack of vision or detailed follow through, council failed to consider grandfathering, cleaning up the red tape or planning for other circumstances that might arise nor did it do a good job of getting people to buy into the new vision.
Instead, they let the planners be the fall guys.
Let's hope this isn't going to be a pattern as the city moves ahead on its plans to revitalize other critical neighbourhoods over the next two decades.
