Richmond seeks your input on Garden City Lands
Posted May 31, 2013 7:48 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
RICHMOND (NEWS1130) – People living in Richmond are invited to give their two cents into the future of a huge piece of land right in the heart of the city.
Public consultations on the “Garden City Lands” happen tomorrow afternoon. The 55 hectares are bound north-south by Alderbridge Way and Westminster Highway and east-west by No. 4 Road and Garden City Road.
Mayor Malcolm Brodie says tomorrow’s “Create Garden City Lands Ideas Fair” is part of a year-long planning process.
“It’s an opportunity for our city to take a major parcel of property right beside our city centre and to maximize the use of it for the benefit of our residents,” he explains.
The city will host guided tours of the lands tomorrow between 11 a.m. and 3 p.m.
“We drive by it; we see it every day, but very few people have ever been onto the land,” says Brodie. “People can then start to give us their ideas, whether it’s right on the spot or email them in to us or get their input in to us in due course.”
The lands were once home to a rifle range and then radio transmission towers before the City of Richmond acquired them from the federal government three years ago.
One thing you won’t see is residential or commercial development; the City tried twice and failed to have the parcel removed from the Agricultural Land Reserve and Brodie insists it won’t try again.
“I don’t see any sign that that would be part of its future,” he tells us. “I’m not trying to predetermine where the process is going to take us… I just don’t see an appetite for that in the city and I haven’t heard of people advocating for it. I think that the property will stay in the Agricultural Land Reserve and we will jointly work with the Agricultural Land Commission and come up with a suitable set of uses for it.”
