Ridley land zoning flies through Public Hearing process with no opposition

It was expected to get a rubber stamp and Monday night the rubber hit the paper as Prince Rupert City Council moved forward a request to change the zoning of land along the Ridley Access Road, a move that will see the land soon to be handed over to the Metlakatla Development Company rezoned to allow for commercial/industrial use.

The process towards the rezoning began a few weeks ago with a letter from the Province of British Columbia noting that the land was soon to be transferred to the Metlakatla First Nation, part of an arrangement tied into a benefits agreement that dates back to the days of LNG negotiations in the region.

Last month we noted how the Metlakatla Development Corporation had outlined its plan to turn a portion of the land into warehousing use, making note of its location as a prime spot to take advantage of the growing import and exports out of the Fairview Container terminal and other port related terminal sites.

Monday saw the city host a Public Hearing, which featured a short overview of the timeline for the rezoning question from City Planner Zeno Krekic, the short public hearing process also found no opposition to the plan registered by the public.

The rezoning and planned use of the land by Metlakatla was also an initiative which found Councillor Blair Mirau strongly endorsing the change, with Mr. Mirau observing how the plans from Metlakatla mesh up well with Port development plans.

"I think just given the evidence in front of us, this proposal is consistent with the Port's long term land use plan, from our perspective as a municipality, I don't think that the original intent of rural-residential is ever really going to come to fruition.  And also if you look at the cost of municipal servicing somewhere out there, that far away, southern Kaien lands actually do make a lot of sense in terms of industrial use and I think it's very complementary to all of the existing port assets on southern Kaien Island"

Mayr Brain also offered up his support towards the zoning change.


The Public Hearing portion of the evening at Council can be reviewed below starting at the very beginning of Monday evening's session.




More notes related to Metlakatla can be found here.

Further background on Monday's City Council session can be found from our Council Timeline feature, with further notes on the Monday session available here.

For a wider overview of past City Council Discussion topics see our Council archive page here.

To return to the most recent blog posting of the day, click here.