New West council has pulled the plug on a plan to open a dental office in a new mixed-use building in Sapperton.
At its April 22 meeting, city council unanimously rejected an application for a zoning amendment bylaw, which would have allowed a dental clinic to be located in a retail unit in the building at 408 East Columbia St. Council had previously voiced concerns about the plan in December.
The six-storey mixed-use building, completed in 2022, includes six stratified commercial retail units (CRUs) on the ground floor, as well as office space on the second floor and residential units above.
According to a staff report, four of the six ground-level commercial retail units are currently occupied. The proposed application would amend the site-specific comprehensive development zone to allow a dental clinic to open in one of the two vacant units.
“The applicant has indicated that they have had difficulty retaining a restaurant food or beverage and convenience retail,” said the report. “As part of their outreach, over 300 local retail tenants were contacted by the applicant to occupy the remaining vacant CRUs.”
A reduction in the number of commercial retail units along East Columbia Street would be beneficial to the local economic growth of Sapperton and to New West as a whole, said a staff report.
In recent months, New Westminster city council members have voiced concern about the number of dental offices opening in spaces where more active commercial and retail businesses are preferred.
Coun. Daniel Fontaine said his wife is a dental hygienist, so he has nothing against dental offices or dentists – but he could not support the application.
“There are a lot of dental offices either coming in or a lot of dental offices in the city. … I will not be supporting the addition of yet one more dental office in a piece of retail on our street that will not be animated, not be activated, and will not bring a terrible amount of life to that particular part of East Columbia,” he said.
Coun. Tasha Henderson is concerned about the trend of transitioning active retail uses to other uses in street-level commercial spaces.
“It is hurting the vitality and vibrancy of our neighbourhoods,” she said. “I think affordability is really at the core here.”
Henderson noted she recently brought forward a motion about regulating commercial rent increases and Coun. Nakagawa brought forward a motion about expediting policy work related to the development of retail spaces.
“Neither of those are quick fixes,” she said.
According to a staff report, the property had an assessed value of $1.7 million in 2024. (The listed price of the 1,645-square-foot stratified commercial unit was not included in the staff report.)
Henderson said it comes as no surprise that the 300 retail businesses contacted wouldn’t be able to buy the space at that price.
“I don't think I know any small business owners that could afford that kind of price tag,” she said. “I'm just not interested in compromising the city's vision (for retail districts) when developers aren't able to sell.”
Henderson, a Sapperton resident, said several dental offices are already located in at-grade spaces in the neighbourhood, so it’s well-covered for that use.
Coun. Ruby Campbell said the city’s retail strategy supports more active street uses in this neighbourhood.
“We're trying to implement the retail strategy, and I'd like to get that right from the onset rather than start to change and tweak and set precedents,” she said. “Quite frankly, we need more active spaces in our communities. … I hope the developer and others will start to listen to 300 businesses who said, ‘No, we can't afford this.’”
Nakagawa said there’s a “bit of a trend” going on in the community, so the city needs a policy about how units are built and marketed.
“The nature of the problem here is there's a policy gap,” she said. “And I'm not willing to compromise it because I don't see us ever shifting it back.”
Mayor Patrick Johnstone said council’s decision to oppose the request to allow a dental office to open in the building is not being unfair to the developer. He said it's being proposed in a building where the 30 per cent of the ground-floor commercial space was intended to be for offices.
“We asked the developer, and they agreed through a rezoning process, that 70 per cent would be something like experiential retail, be it a restaurant, be it a coffee shop, be it a retail store,” he explained. “And they are asking us to exempt that for this one lot.”
