542 Memorial Ave. Hotel / Apartment Development .... next steps

This project on the vacant corner of Hoylake Road East and Memorial Avenue came before council on June 18 2025, for both development permit and development variance applications. You may recall that the project first came forward in January of this year and concerns were raised about the density and height of the proposal.

The developer has now proposed some changes to the design including a reduction of the density from 80 units to 52 units so that it no longer requires a zoning amendment. (This property is zoned C9 which permits both residential and tourist accommodation.) The number of units now requested are within allowable tolerances when density bonusing is applied for the encouraged underground parking.

The developer made reductions to some of the massing by reducing the height on some floors which results in a more attractive building but still requires a height variance as the building proposed is almost 3 times the allowable height. On the east side of the property there are single family homes with height limitations of 11m versus the 21.6 m height proposed in this project.

Council undertook considerable debate on the design and variance issues in the proposal.

At the end of the day council decided to return the project to the developer and staff to consider review and amendments to a number of issues;

-reduction of the height to a maximum of three floors plus a fourth floor to accommodate a small elevator lobby, communal community room and rooftop deck.

-undertake a traffic study for the Hoylake / Memorial intersection with consideration to moving the project access to mid block of Memorial.

-protection of the arbutus tree on Hoylake Road East

-reduction to the steepness of the parking access ramp on the east side on Hoylake

-reduction of the height and prominence of the concrete walls along Memorial Ave.

As council does not sit in August, authorization was given to forward the resulting revisions to the Advisory Planning Commission before bringing the project back to council at some future date.

Personally I am looking forward to seeing the revisions particularly to the traffic flow, as in my view, adding traffic to the Hoylake/ Memorial intersection is precarious as the corner is nearly blind to traffic coming down the hill at quicker than expected speeds.

This project has made reasonable progress and will no doubt be far more attractive and functional than first proposed .

Marie Noel

June 18 2025

We welcome your comments and feedback.

You can email us at QualicumBeachInsights@gmail.com

More Info

June 18 2025 page reference 245 staff report council agenda package

First version submitted in January 2025 compared to new version