Nelson City Council has approved zoning changes that will allow a mix of residential and commercial uses in a partially finished building in Railtown.
The owner, Gerrard Station Development Co. Inc., is planning to repurpose the 29,000 square foot, four-storey building at 45 Government Rd. originally intended to be a cannabis processing facility.
The company’s president and project manager Mitchell Scott told the Nelson Star he wants to “create a mixed-use building with long-term rental residential on the floors above the ground floor, and hopefully, complimentary commercial on the bottom floor.”
He needed two zoning changes to carry this out: one would allow residential use of the property, and the other would require fewer parking stalls than its original zoning.
At its May 9 meeting, council changed the zoning of the property from MU4 (Waterfront Mixed Use, which does not allow residential use) to MU3 (Residential Mixed Use), which does. To bring about this change, council made alterations to Railtown zoning and to Nelson’s Official Community Plan.
The second zoning change lowers by half the required 65 parking spaces at the building.
Zoning changes always require a public hearing if there is a change needed to the Official Community Plan. A hearing allows residents and businesses to weigh in on the proposed changes. In this case, a hearing was scheduled for May 9 preceding the council meeting, but no one from the public attended it.
Scott thinks no one had concerns about his zoning application because “across the city, our residents understand that we have a housing crisis.”
The building was originally planned as a cannabis processing facility owned by the Nelson Cannabis Collective, of which Scott was one of the founders. But in late 2021, the collective announced it was abandoning the project because it could not find enough investment as costs escalated and the price of cannabis dropped during the pandemic.
Short-term rentals contemplated
Part of the change to residential status agreed by council on May 9 includes the allowance of tourist accommodation (short-term rentals) in the building. This was not part of the formal zoning change, but rather council granted it at the meeting as a special permitted use.
Councillors Jesse Pineiro and Leslie Payne voted against the rezoning application because of the inclusion of short-term rentals in the context of Nelson’s zero vacancy rate for long-term rentals.
“I feel like tourist accommodation is plentiful and varied. We need to focus on the needs of the people that live and work here,” Pineiro told the Nelson Star after the meeting.
“There is some debate around that,” Scott told the Nelson Star. “I think it’s a fair comment for sure. I also do think that people also need places to stay when they’re coming to Nelson to visit.”
He said short term rentals would not affect the main residential areas of Fairview and Uphill.
Scott said most of the rental units would be market rentals, but he is in discussions with BC Housing and CMHC, looking for opportunities to offer some suites as subsidized supported housing.
Scott said the building is partially finished inside and the company is currently designing the residential layout and planning to add more windows that were absent from the cannabis processing facility design. He said he hopes to have construction done in 18 months to two years. The company might eventually add two more floors to the building.
Scott said Boston Pizza will not be a tenant in the building, contrary to a recently posted sign outside the property that advertised it as a potential home for the restaurant franchise.
This story was altered on May 12 to add the quote from Councillor Jesse Pineiro about short term rentals.
READ MORE:
• Back to the drawing board: City approves change to Government Road development
• Nelson cannabis company scraps plans for processing facility
bill.metcalfe@nelsonstar.com
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