Marpole Community Plan Before City Council Today

The revised Marpole Community Plan finally goes before council today — two years after city staff began working on it. Once adopted, the plan will guide growth and development over the next 30 years.

Residents protested the draft plan, largely over concerns about proposed rezoning of single-family areas, but the latest document appears to satisfy many critics, including Mike Burdick, spokesman for the Marpole Residents’ Coalition, who said the majority of the group’s members support the plan.

“The reason we’re in favour of it is because it basically fulfills our mandate when we started the coalition, which was to remove the single-family homes from the rezoning effort,” he said. “Almost 100 per cent of the single-family homes were going to be rezoned and now it’s only about 15 per cent.

Burdick acknowledged not everyone backs the document, “but they have a right to speak to that at the council meeting. As far as the organizing group goes, the people who have been to meetings for the last 10 months, we’re happy with it.”

(Tuesday afternoon, a copy of proposed amendment for the Marpole Plan was emailed to the Courier, which was drafted by Marpole residents Don Larson, Wendy Turner, Anita Romaniuk, Claudia Laroye, Gudrun Langolf, Ron Richings and Terry Slack. It asks that city council instruct city staff to investigate the undeveloped lands between Kent Avenue south to the Fraser River in the proximity of Cambie Street [to the west] with an intent to purchase one or more properties for the purpose of developing a ten-acre park. The proposed amendment asks that the park be created in the next two years and that a committee be formed to assist in developing and designing the proposed park and riverfront walkway.)

Read more: http://www.vancourier.com/news/developing-story-revised-marpole-plan-earns-support-1.938412