The Land Management Strategy was presented to Council at its Committee of the Whole meeting held on July 13, 2021. It will be considered for final adoption at its regularly scheduled meeting on August 19, 2021.
To review the Strategy and associated documents, please click on the following links:
City of Powell River Land Management Strategy (2021)
Land Management Strategy Overview Maps
Inventory of all City Owned Properties
Background
Shortly after acquiring the remainder of the properties owned by the Powell River Waterfront Development Corporation in 2019, Council expressed a strong interest in building a strategy for all City owned properties that would include consultation with the public about their future development. The initiative was included in the 2020 – 2022 Strategic Plan for completion in 2021.
Early in 2020, senior development staff (Properties, Development and Communications; Planning Services; Infrastructure; Finance) discussed what a strategy should entail and took the time to go through the City’s inventory of properties to eliminate properties that shouldn’t be considered for analysis (e.g., parks, trails, city facilities, etc.). In doing so staff were able to reduce the inventory to a more manageable number of properties.
With the approval of Council in April 2020, the City applied to the Island Coastal Economic Trust (ICET) for matching funds to support the development of a strategy. The application was successful and ICET committed to providing $20,000 to cover fifty percent of the $40,000 project cost.
In August 2020 professional planning consultants Urban Systems was selected as the firm to work with the city on the formulation of the strategy.
At the beginning of the project, there were nine key tasks identified for the formulation of a Land Management Strategy. These tasks included:
- Data collection and preparation of GIS layers
- Acquisition and integration of 3rd party property information
- Detailed review and revisions to municipal land inventory (City of Powell River: 168 sites)
- Preparation of Detailed Land Inventory (Draft: 36 sites)
- Workshop #1 with senior staff to review Detailed Land Inventory and identify disposition targets.
- Identification of short, medium and long-term disposition opportunities
- Preparation of Detailed Land inventory (Final: 25 sites)
- Preparation of Property Profiles for each surplus site (25)
- Workshop #2 with senior staff to review Detailed Land Inventory and options for future phases of the Land Management Strategy.
The Detailed Land Inventory was reviewed and analysed, and the City’s initial list of potential surplus sites reduced from 168 properties to the 25 with greatest potential for repurposing. The final list of 25 surplus sites includes sites that are owned by the City of Powell River, may not be required by the City or for long-term community needs, and have potential for strategic reuse and/or disposition. To assess how soon opportunities for disposition, lease or redevelopment would become available, each site was categorized into one of three disposition timeline categories: short-term (within 2 years), medium-term (within 4 years), and long-term (5 or more years). Key action recommendations for some sites may also be subsequently refined depending on the outcome of the current Townsite neighbourhood review project planning process.
