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Liquor store back to council
Controversial 12th Street application heads back to the table Monday
By Theresa McManus
Record Reporter
A controversial rezoning application will be back at city council for Round 2 on Monday night.
Nirmal Walia, owner of the Windsor Hotel and liquor store on Columbia Street, has applied to city hall to rezone 804 12th St. to allow a liquor store as a permitted use.
If the rezoning is successful, Walia's plan is to relocate the liquor store from Columbia Street to 12th Street.
New Westminster city council first considered the rezoning application at a public hearing in August 2006, at which time council voted five to two in favour of the rezoning application.
However, council rescinded third reading of the rezoning for 804 12th St. in the fall, after Walia appeared before council to comment on the need to finalize the rezoning application promptly.
A new public hearing has been scheduled for Jan. 22.
"We have to continue the process," said Mayor Wayne Wright. "He has his notification up on the window. We go from there."
Some individuals had raised concerns that the sign informing the public that the site was going to council for a rezoning application hadn't been displayed for 30 days.
"It's not 30 days, it is seven," Wright said about notification requirements. "It conforms."
The Moody Park Residents' Association has requested that city council postpone any public hearings on the matter until all legal issues surrounding the Columbia Street property are resolved.
Ballenas Project Management Ltd. and P.S.D. Enterprises, owner of the Windsor Hotel at 738 Columbia St., entered into a purchase and sale agreement regarding the building in June 2006.
P.S.D. Enterprises then refused to complete the purchase and Ballenas applied to the courts to uphold the agreement.
Walia is the principal of P.S.D. Enterprises.
Supreme Court Justice J. Truscott ruled that P.S.D. Enterprises must sell the property to Ballenas effective March 15, 2007 and pay Ballenas's court costs. Ballenas plans to consolidate the lots and build a mixed-use commercial-residential tower on the consolidated lot.
The judge's ruling made no mention of the city's involvement in the matter. P.S.D. Enterprises had named the City of New Westminster as a third party in the legal proceedings.
"The city was very clear on everything we did," Wright told The Record Monday.
"I was following the instructions from legal people right from the beginning."
tmcmanus@royalcityrecord.com
published on 01/20/2007
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