Coquitlam wants to make it easier for child care providers to set up shop in the city.
During a council-in-committee meeting Monday, staff presented a proposal that would create a consistent definition for child care spaces and expand the areas where child care facilities can be located.
The zoning amendments would also look at creating a uniform parking standard for larger daycares.
“Right now, child care has different parking rules,” said Andrew Merrill, a community planner with the city. “They have a higher standard. [A childcare provider] may find a commercial unit and then we tell them, ‘Oh, you don’t have enough parking stalls, we can’t give you the permit.’”
Paul Penner, a social planner with the city, said a traffic study is required when daycares open. A more relaxed but consistent standard could simplify the application process, he said, making it easier for new daycares to launch. The city is also looking at allowing daycares to operate in more areas — for example, the C1 zone, where child care is currently a prohibited use. The proposed changes are just the first phase in a larger strategy geared toward incentivizing the creation of more daycare spaces.
Staff called the immediate actions the “cleanup phase” and said a more comprehensive child care strategy would commence in the second phase.
He later added that with higher levels of government offering financial incentives, the city can start to “open up the playing field so more businesses can access the senior government funding in our community.”
In the meantime, staff said they would continue to encourage developers to consider including child care spaces in their projects. City manager Peter Steblin said the city is already seeing some results.
“Developers themselves have been proposing daycare facilities much more than I have ever noticed before,” he said.
