LAKE COUNTRY Mayor cool on more tax breaks for downtown development

The mayor of Lake Country isn’t interested in venturing very far down a discussion of sweetening Main Street tax incentives.

James Baker said Monday he wouldn’t favour increasing the financial benefits developers can reap if they build on long-vacant downtown properties.

“We do want to see diversified development, but we shouldn’t have to give away the farm to get it,” Baker said.

He acknowledges, however, current incentives for Main Street development haven’t had the kind of result that was hoped for when they were put into place.

“We’re growing very fast in many ways,” Baker said, referring to successive years of increased building permit values.

“But our vision of mixed-use development, with residential-commercial-office uses all in one building, that doesn’t seem to be what builders want to do,” Baker said.

The Main Street tax incentives are on the agenda for a “strategy session” meeting of Lake Country council tonight.

“There’s no specific proposal, just a review of the existing tax revitalization bylaw and whether council is comfortable with it, or would like staff to investigate and bring back changes which could be to extend, eliminate, enhance or replace it with something else,” deputy town administrator Tanya Garost wrote in an email.

Baker said one of Lake Country’s current incentives for downtown development is allowing six-storey buildings if the project meets the towns definition of a mixed-use project.

Main Street, which runs parallel to Highway 97, was built by the town in 2008 at a cost of $7 million, the hope being it would evolve into an attractive, pedestrian-friendly district.

Some buildings have been constructed, but there are still a considerable number of vacant properties.

The biggest project recently approved is a six-storey building, with 10,000 square feet of commercial space, on the west side of Main Street between Hill Road and Winfield Road.

“The development permit was authorized by council, but the permit has not been issued as the applicant (still) has to provide the landscape deposit prior,” community development director Mark Koch wrote in an email.