Residents will have a chance to voice concerns over land-use jurisdiction at the Nanaimo Airport.
City Spaces, a Victoria consulting firm hired by the Regional District of Nanaimo to gather information on airport land use, is hosting a public meetings Nov. 10 at the Cedar Heritage Centre, 1644 MacMillan Rd. at 7 p.m., and Nov. 15 at the Parksville Community Centre at 7 p.m.
The consultant, hired last spring at a cost of $50,000, spent the summer meeting with different airport interest groups, going over jurisdiction issues at Nanaimo and other B.C. airports.
Paul Thompson, RDN manager of long range planning, said the meetings will give the consultant an idea of what people want to see happen on the airport land.
“Based on that feedback and conversations with airport stakeholders, [City Spaces] is to come up with some recommendations for the RDN board on how to proceed in working with the Nanaimo Airport Commission in reaching some kind of agreement on who would be involved and how land-use would be determined in the future,” he said.
Confusion over airport land use and jurisdiction slowed the Area A (Cedar, Yellow Point, Cassidy and South Wellington) Official Community Plan review and the RDN board decided to look at airport land use separately. The Area A OCP was approved in July.
“Because it was taking so long and instead of holding up the whole OCP plan, the RDN board decided to do this a separate process,” said Thompson. “The consultation will provide information or some kind of agreement between NAC and the regional district, and then there can be a change or amendment to the OCP.”
The timeline for City Spaces to provide recommendations to the RDN is early 2012.