Official Community Plan Primer

A narrative of how our proposed development aligns with the goals of the City’s Official Community Plan (OCP) and our local area plan will be a key piece of our rezoning application. So let’s see how our proposed project stacks up under the lens of the City of Victoria’s OCP and the Gonzales Neighbhourhood Community Plan, both of which will dictate the limits of our project.

Here is the City’s vision for itself in 2041:

Pretty general stuff, but so far so good. We believe our project will inspire innovation toward community resiliency and will build on our city’s exceptional quality of life through its walkable neighbhourhoods of unique character.

Let’s dig a little deeper into the subject area goals that are most relevant to our development.

Goals for Land Development and Management:

We’re adding a modest amount of new housing to an over-sized single family lot that is spitting distance from shops, bus lines, schools, parks, and bike routes. We’re not building that economic activity, but we are adding residents that will support this model of development.

Goals for Climate Change and Energy:

We’re rebuilding an existing home rather than tearing it down. This existing home and the new home we add next to it will be designed to consume very little energy, and will rely solely on solar PV and non-fossil fuel based electricity. We will also consider material choices, favouring local, durable, and low embodied energy materials wherever possible.

So looks like we are aligned on the broad goals of the OCP. We need to dig deeper to see what it says more specifically about the Traditional Residential area that characterizes our location.

Here’s the General Development Guidance for Urban and Traditional Residential areas:

So now we have to look at the Urban Place Guidelines for Traditional Residential:

We’re proposing ground oriented buildings 2-storeys or less, with front and rear yards, thoughtful landscaping, off street parking, one single family home + one single family home with secondary suite, and floor space ratios of 0.5 and 0.6. So, check, check and check.

Things are looking good on the OCP front. What about in relation to the Gonzales Neighbhourhood Community Plan? This document is older than the OCP, published in 2002, so some elements may be outdated, but we still want to see if we are aligned with the plan’s overarching philosophy.

This Plan has three specific guidelines that most directly relate to our proposal:

• 3.2.3 Retain and maintain the existing viable single family and detached housing stock.
• 3.2.4 Retain existing, and where appropriate, encourage the provision of additional, affordable housing, e.g. “secondary suites” in houses.
• 3.2.5 Maintain and enhance a diversity of housing in Gonzales to meet the needs of a variety of people with different needs and incomes.

Subsequent to the writing of this plan, the R1-G2 Gonzales Small Lot District zone was created, which supports in concept what we are proposing. See this post for a rundown of where we diverge. If we were not adding a suite, we could meet the R1-G2 zoning with variances – the addition of a suite to a small lot house kicks it into a custom zone based on R1-G2.