A new development planned for Fort Langley is getting a very slow introduction to the community.
Eric Woodward’s Statewood Properties is considering what to build on a plot of land at Glover Road and Church Street. The site is across Glover from the Fort Langley Community Hall.
“We really are at the start of the process, with the planning session input from local residents critical to me at every stage of the process I want to be part of,” Woodward said in an email to the Langley Advance.
Woodward said he is looking at a three-storey structure, with underground parking.
“It is still my belief that underground parking, with cars out of sight, really enables a better, people-orientated design that our village needs, and I need three storeys to make that work,” Woodward said.
The site is likely to have a mixture of retail and restaurants at ground level and with mixed uses above.
Both Glover and that stretch of Church Street are considered commercial areas, but Woodward said concerns about putting more commercial on Church came up at the meeting.
In early October, about 100 people turned up for an early public planning meeting on the site and possible plans.
There is no overall concept for the design yet, although Woodward said he wants to respond to and incorporate the design of the hall.
A design would go to the public first and then to the Township council. Woodward believes it could take place sometime in 2016.
This would be Woodward’s second three-storey mixed-use building for Fort Langley.
The first was the Coulter Berry building, still under construction at the corner of Glover and Mavis Avenue.
That project proved controversial, with lengthy public hearings and a legal action that temporarily halted construction. That ruling was overturned, but by that time the Township had already gone through a full rezoning process that sidestepped the issues with the court.
The Coulter Berry building hearings divided the Fort’s residents and business community, with a slight majority at the public hearings in favour of the project.