4 replies to this topic

[amor de cosmos]

West Shore offers solution to office-space shortage

Land, parking and environment cited in mayors' pitch to the province

Bill Cleverley, Times Colonist
Published: Monday, February 11, 2008

The province should be widening its net as it casts about Victoria for office space, say West Shore officials.

"People want to live and work in their own communities," said Langford Mayor Stew Young.

"But every time the province wants to build an office building they want to build it in downtown Victoria. Then we all get in our cars and wait in a lineup to get there," he said.

Colwood has already written to the province suggesting it not exclude the West Shore when looking for more space. Langford will soon do the same, said Mayor Stew Young.

"We can build offices out here. We have sewer and water. We have everything that the city has to offer but more parking, more land. Why are we jamming more people into downtown Victoria?"

The province recently put out a request for Expressions of Interest for 300,000 square feet of downtown Victoria office space in order to better house some ministry operations.

The request, while allowing the needed space could be spread out over a number of buildings, does specify it be located in a downtown catchment area between Chatham, Quadra, Belleville and Wharf streets as the preferred location.

*snip*

In his letter to the province, Twa says building office space in the West Shore "is perfectly aligned with the province's goals of reducing greenhouse gas emissions as it will reduce the need for many who live in the West Shore to commute to Victoria."

Ilich said there's no guarantee a relocation of an office to the West Shore would necessarily mean a decrease in greenhouse gases.

"We're actively pursuing the climate change agenda and we will be looking at where the people who work for us live, and, over a period of time, we may be looking at doing those kinds of things like putting offices out further afield. But at the moment, we don't have any data on where people live that work for us," she said.

Both Twa and Young acknowledge there isn't a great deal of built office space available in their communities now, but they say they are willing to make provision for it.

Young met this week with West Shore Chamber of Commerce officials to discuss its West Shore rebranding exercise. He hopes the process will "wake up" the senior government to the growth happening in the West Shore.

http://www.canada.co...95-b20e41881e50

[G-Man]

Please this is ridiculous. Yeah lets put offices on the edge of the city so that the majority of people HAVE to drive to work.

Currently the majority of the population still lives in the core munis and can get to work by walking or talking one short bus ride.

Kudos to the BC government for including in the RFP the preference for downtown Vic!

[Nparker]

I agree with you completely G-Man. I almost spit out my cornflakes when I read this online this morning. Just what we need, all the people who currently live in the core and work dowtown commuting out to the West Shore to work. Yes growth is taking place out there, but this notion completely discounts all the established communties like Fairfield, Oak Bay, Gordon Head and the Peninsula. Do none of these people work downtown now? I can't imagine they'd be too happy commuting out twice as far to Langford every day.

Add to this all the people in the proposed government offices out there would be constantly having to drive into town for meetings with the rest of their ministries, and associated government agencies. I trust the good folks at ARES will file this concept where it belongs...in the round bin.

[Mike K.]

It's nice to let the little guy vent.

I bet it bugs Langford/Colwood that combined with the rest of the west shore municipalities they're home to just 20% of the region's population.

[Ms. B. Havin]

I totally agree with you guys. But I have to say that this bit caught my eye (quote by Stew Young):

"We can build offices out here. We have sewer and water."

We have sewer and water ...which made our downtown infrastructure woes, and the exceedingly strange attempts to address them with blackwater holding tanks, more painfully obvious.

Langford says, "we got sewers," and Victoria answers, "we got really scary tanks"?