The future sale and redevelopment of Port Moody’s former Fire Hall and current Works Yard sites has reached a new milestone. The proposed OCP amendment and rezoning goes to City Council next week after achieving support of the City’s community planning advisory committee.

The future redevelopment of the two City-owned properties has been in the works for some time. The City’s plan is to rezone the lands for high density mixed-use before selling them to developers and moving the works yard to a site on Barnet Highway. 

The properties are located along Murray Street at the corner of Ioco Road, and have a combined site area of approximately 4.7 acres. The sites are located South of the well-established Suterbrook Village, and just West of Newport Village. Inlet Centre Skytrain Station is located just one block South.

The application proposes a change to the existing OCP land use designation of Public and Institutional and Parks and Open Space to Mixed Use – Inlet Centre. The lots will be legally subdivided potentially paving the way for the sites to be sold separately.

Details for the potential new development(s) under the proposed rezoning includes:

• building heights up to 34-storeys;
• potentially 3 to 4 towers and 1 to 3 lowrise buildings;
• uses including:
  • multifamily
  • seniors housing
  • civic uses (library, plaza)
  • park
  • retail and office
  • child care
• a maximum buildable area of 940,000 SF;
• a maximum of 610,000 SF for market residential;
• potential for 186,000 SF more market residential in exchange for amenities and/or non-market housing;
• a multi-use pathway.

The City estimates that the RFP for sale would be released to the development community in April and that a potential sale (or sales) would be completed later this year. Work could begin on the Fire Hall site as early as next year, with the Works Yard site starting in 2020/2021.

The site is being rezoned and sold at a time of unprecedented development activity in Port Moody with several large scale developments in the pipeline at various stages of development, including: the Flavelle Mill site, Westport Village (Andres Wines) site, Onni’s latest tower “The Grande” at Suterbrook, a proposal by Berezan Group for three towers, and a pending sale of a multi-tower site in the Coronation Park neighbourhood.

Further detail on the City owned sites can be viewed on the City’s websites: http://www.portmoody.ca/index.aspx?page=1422