No public hearing necessary despite competing bid, staff says
Jeff Lee
Sun
The private liquor outlet planned for the Olympic village would be the city’s third-largest. Photograph by: Ward Perrin, Vancouver Sun files
There are no residents yet in the new Olympic village on False Creek, but already a dispute has erupted over who should supply the emerging neighbourhood with liquor.
City planners want to permit a massive new private liquor store in the heart of the brand-new village, adjacent to many of the highrise towers. At 8,600 square feet, the site would become the third-largest booze outlet in the city, behind two government-run stores.
But they’re being challenged by a Burnaby company that already holds a preliminary liquor licence from the B.C. Liquor Control Board and wants to open a more modest store 400 metres away at the corner of Quebec Street and Second Avenue.
The Burnaby company, West Coast Liquor, needs the property to be rezoned.
But in a report going to a city council committee today, city staff want the politicians to refuse West Coast Liquor’s rezoning application outright without letting it go to a public hearing. They argue that the store wouldn’t fit with the city’s planning policies for the new Olympic village, which contemplates a central commercial core that would include a grocery store, pharmacy and liquor outlet.
The planning department’s stance has angered West Coast Liquor’s co-owner, John Teti, who accuses the city of acting as a de facto agent for Millennium Development, the company building the village. He also says the city might be in a conflict because it owns the land and has also become Millennium’s major financial backer with the $100-million-plus construction loan guarantee it gave late last year.
“They can deny me going to a public hearing, but they are in a conflict of interest on this,” Teti said. “They’re acting as agents for their own developer.”
Teti said he followed the city’s rules for private liquor stores and applied for and received a provincial liquor licence. He said the city tried to push him into leasing the Millennium property, but he balked because of the high cost. He said he’s paying $32 a square foot for the Second Avenue location, as opposed to the $75 a square foot he was quoted for the Millennium property. The difference, he said, was in the order of half a million dollars a year in leasing costs, and to him that makes a liquor store inside the village a financial bust. He also wonders why the city would want such a large liquor store in a neighbourhood that already has five public or private liquor stores in a 15-block radius.
However, the city says it has been told by another company, Granville Entertainment Group, that it is willing to locate a liquor store in the village.
Ron Orr, Granville Entertainment’s chief financial officer, said it signed a lease recently with Millennium and has applied to transfer an existing but dormant liquor licence to the proposed site, but can’t get provincial approval because Teti’s application took precedence and is within 500 metres of the village. He said Teti’s proposed store is too far from the core, is not near any commercial businesses and doesn’t have enough parking.
Teti, on the other hand, says his proposed store is within the city’s planned redevelopment of the Southeast False Creek area and would adequately serve the new neighbourhood.
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