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The Parish Property Development Committee (PDC) has been meeting during the months of January through to date. We now meet every two weeks, or more as necessary.  PDC continues to focus its current work on preparing the required Detailed Planning Application (DPA) to submit to the District of North Vancouver (DNV) which must respond to all the comments we received last year from DNV on our earlier Preliminary Planning Application for this project.

Our DPA is a lengthy and detailed set of documents focussing on the lot subdivision and re-zoning that’s proposed to establish the 2 residential lots we’d then sell to support the “Seize the Day” project (a smaller rectory lot and a new lot in part of our current parking area). Design work for how St. Catherine’s would use those future land sale proceeds to renovate the church will get much sharper focus for PDC (and DNV) at a later stage when we apply for the required building permits, and only after Parish Council has consulted the congregation and settled those building plans.  For now, at this DPA stage, the DNV and PDC are primarily focussed on exterior features relevant to lot subdivision & re-zoning like proposed lot boundaries, new driveways, parking lot size and configuration, heritage and environmental conditions, sewer maintenance rights of way, utility services, tree protection, community consultation and support, zoning and bylaw compliance, fire services, traffic management, etc.  At this stage DNV only needs a “big picture” general outline for the exterior footprint of the church buildings (e.g. removal of the gym to show our replacement parking).

We are aiming for the DPA to be completed and delivered to the DNV by the middle of June, if not sooner.  To complete the DPA, in January your PDC engaged a number of consultants to perform the third-party engineering, survey and study work DNV requires from us as part of our application. Key areas of third party work underway or to be completed are such things as a transportation study; a geotechnical report; road and sidewalk assessments to meet current standards, an updated arborist report; a landscaping plan; a fire department access plan; preliminary drainage design; a street lighting report; a third party utilities connection plan and a waste management plan.

There is a meeting with our consultants and the PDC on the 17th of April to discuss the required work and allocate any outstanding DPA key deliverables.  Meetings to discuss our draft DPA with DNV staff and executives will follow before formal submission, as well as consultation with the Diocese about key land and lot features of interest to them.

Funding for this third party DPA work was budgeted in the 2026 Capital Project Budget approved at Vestry in February and will be obtained from the line of credit loan provided by the Diocese for this project (for which interest has been waived in 2026).

The PDC continues to manage and monitor the progress of the project and provide written quarterly reports to the Diocese and verbal monthly reports to Parish Council, in addition to these newsletter updates.  Any of us (Chris Wensley, Billy Garton, Heather Lucock, Janet Benjamin and Alistair Peacock) would welcome any questions you have about the project.  At least one of us is usually available after each Sunday service at coffee should you wish to ask us then.