Penticton Council is more than willing to consider limiting the size, form and character of carriage houses, but they showed very little support for banning them outright in a prestigious neighbourhood where residents raised a giant fuss over one property owners’ plans to build a large secondary suite.
Carriage houses are “secondary units” built on lots adjacent to main homes and there have been dozens of them built in Penticton since the City first allowed them eight years ago.
Residents who live in the Kendall Crescent and Ridgedale Avenue signed a petition and rallied to voice their concerns about a proposal to build a large carriage house in their neighbourhood.
Their concerns resulted in City planning staff forwarding a motion to have Council consider an option to ban carriage houses from their neighbourhood.
Following a presentation from senior planner Blake Laven relating to introducing several regulations that would limit the size and scope of carriage houses - also commonly known as Lane Houses - members of Council did not show much support for banning them in this particular neighbourhood.
Council ended up supporting a motion to hold a public hearing on proposed changes to zoning bylaws relating to changing carriage house regulations. They also approved moving the proposed bylaw that would ban them from the Kendall Crescent neighbourhood to the same public hearing on Oct. 2, but made it clear they have very little intentions of singling out one neighbourhood for special consideration.
Laven said staff does consider the Kendall Crescent subdivision to be “unique” as it dates back more than 50 years and features large lots, most of them with mature trees.
“It is a very established neighbourhood with many long-term residents, strong pride in place … and characterized by single and two-storey housing with very generous and mature landscaping,” he said. “This request has come from a majority of the neighbourhood.”
Coun. Helena Konanz said she could not support any proposal which gives special preference to only one small neighbourhood.
She also remained adamant that Penticton is in the midst of a “housing crisis” and that crisis would be much worse if it wasn’t for the positive impact of secondary suites provided by carriage houses.
“There are many very unique and special neighbourhoods in this city and I know that there are probably quite a few others that would … get 60 or 80% in a petition saying they don’t want to densify,” she said. “Unfortunately, we have a housing crisis in Penticton, so if we were to go through the OCP process and decide there were certain areas in the community where carriage houses don’t fit, I think that’s the route to go through this. I do believe there are other neighbourhoods that would really not like any suites or any carriage houses on their streets.”
At the end of the OCP process, there may well be some areas of the City where carriage houses are prohibited, but she’s not willing to support any motion to exempt one specific neighbourhood, said Konanz.
Coun. Campbell Watt agreed, saying Kendall Crescent “is not the only unique neighbourhood in Penticton.”
Watt said he would prefer having all applications to build carriage houses go through the Official Community Plan (OCP) process to include what should and shouldn’t be excluded in any neighbourhood, not just one.
“Should we expect to have follow ups with the other 10, 12, 20 neighbourhoods believing they are unique to have to go through the same process,” he said.
Coun. Andre Martin also wouldn’t support singling out one neighbourhood for special consideration.
“I’m not in favour of this either,” he said. “We do have the OCP process … I think to single out one neighbourhood and allow them to do this is opening a can of worms.”
He agreed the OCP process is the best way to deal with this issue.
“They will designate maybe some areas of town that will not have it and then we can go down that path.”
Laven said the policy to allow carriage houses in the first place was to densify neighbourhoods, provide extra housing and allow property owners to generate revenue to help with their own mortgages.
Staff prepared the bylaw for Council to consider banning carriage houses from this one neighbourhood, “but we’re not necessarily recommending support of it,” he said. “We want to prepare the bylaw and give Council the opportunity to refer to the public hearing.
“I think our policies do encourage the use of these lots for secondary suites for carriage houses for gentle densification. Our feelings are that our Official Community Plan does speak to this and does certainly recommend opportunities for infill where we can find it.”
