Port Moody Realtor Concerned about Widening Gap…
Geographically, west Port Moody represents about one third of the 26 sq.km total area of Port Moody.
The Glenayre Community Centre, which is now well over 40 years old, and the Westhill Centre, built in 1974, are the only municipal facilities providing services in the west of Port Moody. Meanwhile, there are twelve other facilities, mostly modern, scattered throughout the rest of Port Moody and offering a large range of municipal services.
The gap between Port Moody west and the rest of Port Moody continues to grow, and remains unaddressed. For instance, there are no, grocery stores, convenience stores, banks, or drugstores, in the west end of our city.
Over eighty-six hundred people continue to have to leave the west area in which they live to get basic goods and most services, and as we know, many of them are going outside of Port Moody to do this.
The city failed to get an Evergreen Line station built in the west for the 2016 start-up, and despite objective and factual information provided by a large number of property owners. The case by the Evergreen Line Project Team (Ministry of Transportation) for a station in the centre of Port Moody is tenuous at best, and as we discovered and reported, several large flaws subsist in their justification. Notwithstanding this the government driven agenda (certainly not the taxpayers) races forward.
As a matter of fact, no comprehensive regional transportation (or transit) plan even exists for the future of the north-east sector, at least not one that is an integral part of the Official Community Plan (OCP) discussion. The consequence is that any OCP discussion in Port Moody is being conducted in a vacuum.
The OCP discussion that has been taking place for over 5 years has been dominated by the topic of density and short-term fragmented zoning, and as a result a true bold vision for Port Moody hasn’t emerged.
I’d like to be positive, but there is little hope that the last few scheduled public meetings of June 8th and 18th will help to resolve the widening gap.
Let me know how I might be more optimistic, please.
John Grasty, ABR®, SRES®