Oakdale residents will get their chance to weigh in on a plan for their neighbourhood during a public hearing Feb. 24 at Coquitlam city hall.
The land use option before Coquitlam council includes transit-village commercial and high-density apartment residential along Como Lake Avenue and the southern portion of Clarke Road. The plan then allows medium density north of Kemsley Avenue and along the northern portion of Clarke Road, followed by townhouses between Harrison and Nicola Avenue.
Streets around Chapman Avenue and Gilroy Crescent would remain houses.
Residents can appear in person at the public hearing, which will take place at 7 p.m. in council chambers at city hall (3000 Guildford Way, Coquitlam). Written comments can also be submitted to the city clerk's office at city hall before noon Feb. 24. For more information go to coquitlam.ca/publichearing or call 604-927-3010.
An update for the area was initially planned to be included in the larger Burquitlam-Lougheed Neighbourhood Plan (BLNP), which was adopted in 2017.
But during the public consultation for the BLNP, the response from Oakdale residents were largely negative and city staff decided to move ahead with the plan without including the neighbourhood.
After the BLNP was approved, residents came back to city hall seeking increases in density for their area.
Last year, staff took initial public consultation steps, which were met with more enthusiasm from area residents.
“We realized during the Burquitlam-Lougheed Neighbourhood Plan process that there was no consensus on Oakdale,” said Andrew Merrill, Coquitlam’s manager of community planning, in an interview with The Tri-City News last year. “They are the missing piece to the plan.”
Oakdale has roots that go back to the mid-1800s, when farmers grew produce and livestock on their land to sell at markets in New Westminster, then the capital of B.C. North Road, which was then about two blocks west from today’s location, was also used by the Royal Engineers to get from the Royal City to Burrard Inlet in Port Moody.
In the 1960s, Oakdale changed from agricultural land to residential and most of the homes built then remain today.
