A new Porsche dealership might become the tallest building in the Richmond Auto Mall.
Richmond city council is looking at an application to build a three-storey dealership on Smallwood Place, which is proposed to be between three and eight metres higher than the 12-metre height permitted by bylaw.
The building, which will replace the Hyundai dealership, would include a showroom, service drive-through, workshop, storage, parking, a detailing car wash, a vehicle photo booth, as well as offices and staff space.
Coun. Michael Wolfe said he was concerned the shadow of the building would stretch into the environmentally sensitive area of the Richmond Nature Park in the early morning. In the context of sustainability, he also questioned why there wouldn’t be solar panels on the building.
Mayor Malcolm Brodie pointed out that in the planning committee, the proponent had said, as a sustainable idea, there would be parking on the roof to get cars off the road, so there would be little room left for solar panels.
This building would be about half a metre taller than the tallest building in the auto mall, staff explained to council last week.
Coun. Kelly Greene proposed a deferral of the application to ask for more sustainable options.
“We’re seeing this creep, creep, creep of FAR (floor-area ratio) and height and I wonder as the renewal of the auto mall continues, are we going to continue to see the creep, are we going to see every application is a little bit bigger than the last,” Greene said. She added that the entire auto mall plan should be looked at or council should be saying the variances are “too much.”
Brodie pointed out when the auto mall was running out space a few years ago, they came with a request to go onto agricultural land.
“We told them that the challenge for them was to densify where they already were,” Brodie said.
Greene’s referral was defeated and council voted to pass first reading with Wolfe and Greene voting against it.
The height variances will be considered during the development permit application process.
