City of Richmond staff have presented its new Hamilton Area Plan to a city planning committee for review.
The plan compliments the city's 2041 Official Community Plan and calls for Hamilton's population to increase from about 5,400 residents to around 12,000 by 2034.
The current plan, drafted in 1995, calls for a population boost to just 9,800. The population increase will largely happen as a result of densification, since the small community is bound by the river to the north and south as well as the Agricultural Land Reserve to the west and New Westminster to the east.
This densification - through townhouses and four-story apartments - will provide greater incentive for developers to provide amenities such as a revamped shopping centre, a community police station, improved roads and bike lanes, a small library and a new waterfront park on the river's north arm. The amenities would be built as
needed. The overall goal is to make Hamilton a more self-sufficient community, given its distance from central Richmond.
"The issue is, the more development, the more money (the community) will have to pay for things," said Terry Crowe, the city's manager of policy planning.
The proposed waterfront park would be about 2.75 hectares and would eventually be connected to the south arm via Queen Canal and more modern streetscapes.
The more populous community will also require an additional 4,000 square feet of recreation space as the recently renovated Hamilton Community Centre is only capable of handling 9,000 residents.
The plan comes after reviewing a survey that saw 89 written responses from Hamilton's 1,565 existing dwellings. Crowe said the low turnout is largely a result of the acceptance of the plan, based on prior consultations.
Should the plan be accepted, it will go to city council next week for approval of a public hearing tentatively scheduled for Feb. 25.
