After months of surveys, kitchen table meetings, questionnaires and open houses, the District of Lantzville is one step closer to completing its official community plan update.
Lantzville released the draft version of its OCP online earlier this month. The 156-page document is an update from the district’s first OCP, which was released in 2005. It contains information about planning direction, vision and growth for the future of Lantzville and is meant to be a guiding document that anticipates what might occur over a 20-year period.
The draft OCP acknowledges residents’ desire to maintain the community’s character of rural to semi-rural with a village feel. In cases of new development, the OCP aims to avoid cookie-cutter, homogeneous subdivisions. It also aims to retain the current single-family residential neighbourhoods upper and lower Lantzville and limit higher-density residential development to the village core.
Lantzville’s draft OCP also indicates that the district will consider seniors-oriented assisted living and long-term care facilities either in the village core area or in east Lantzville that have a maximum of 400 units and suggests that the district will support the development of secondary suites on single-family detached homes lots.
Instead of focusing any new development sprawling outwards, the OCP places more attention to infilling existing areas within Lantzville known as special plan areas or SPAs. These areas include the village commercial core, village lowlands, village south, village west, upper Lantzville Ware Road, upper Lantzville Superior Road and Lantzville east and have a range of allowed uses that include residential, educational and recreational and allow for broader range of housing choices such as smaller-lot single-family homes to patio-home and multi-family properties.
When it came to the village core, the draft plan aims to create a “smarter” and more “vibrant” area. The draft allows for buildings to be as high as three storeys and encourages the creation of courtyards and public gathering places within commercial and residential developments in the village core as well as affordable housing and seniors housing, ornamental street lighting, off-site landscaping, public gathering places, and space for a farmers’ market.
It noted that marijuana production or distribution facilities are forbidden unless approved by the district. Approved marijuana-related businesses must be located in commercial zoning and must be located more than 500 metres from schools.
Lantzville councillors still need to vote the draft’s OCP adoption. The draft will also be discussed by members of the OCP review select committee on Oct. 18.
nicholas.pescod@nanaimobulletin.com
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