What makes the area a great place to live?
"I can't think of a more beautiful setting than the Fraser Valley," said Banman. "It is absolutely breathtakingly beautiful. We're a great place to raise families. We have found through data from the Fraser Valley Regional District that the jobs are close to home. Most people do not commute. Abbotsford at one time was considered a bedroom community not any more. And there's also our location. We are conveniently located right along the border. For those who want to holiday or travel, we have an international airport. We're close to Vancouver; we're close to skiing, fishing, outdoors. So our location is great."
Across the river, Mayor Adlem has a similar take on the District of Mission's qualities. " Mission is a very desirable place to live for younger folks because of our affordability," he said. "I would suggest in the Lower Mainland setting, if you look at the entire Lower Mainland, the District of Mission is probably one of the more affordable places for families to settle. We are a combined urban and very rural setting in our community. You can have a home in the District of Mission and five minutes away from your home you can be in the wilderness and our community forests. We have 150 kilometres of hiking trails and our community forest on the west side of Stave Lake will be a booming tourist attraction in 10 or 15 years."
A growing community
In the last 20 years, the number of households in Abbotsford has doubled; in the next 20 years, population growth will add an additional 70,000 people.
"We will expand. That's inevitable, but we can control sprawl, and one of the ways that we can do that is to make sure we have high density within the city core," said Banman. "We still have plenty of room for growth on our eastern side for residential and we are attracting some of the largest developers in the Lower Mainland if not Canada."
Banman speaks highly of the city's plans for the U District around the University of the Fraser Valley and the city's approach to putting greater emphasis on neighbourhood planning and consulting communities about their needs and desires.
Mayor Banman: "In 2011 city staff began developing a 30-year planning concept for the area around the university. It's approximately 365 acres in size and currently has a population of about 2,000 residents. We went to the university and involved the students themselves as to what kind of things they want to see, what kinds of things the public wants to see. We went on this extensive public consultation process and involved the landowners and residents in the area. We're going to end up with a completely new planned neighbourhood that will include all the amenities that people want to have around them. It will be places to shop, places to eat, transit corridors, all the things that one would want."
The mayor is also excited about the Highstreet mall opening soon. "That is the largest mall that has been built in western Canada in the last 30 years between Vancouver and Calgary," said Banman. "They have 600,000 square feet of retail space; it has more concrete than BC Place."
Maple Ridge district council is heavily committed to redevelopment in its downtown core, which Mayor Adlem looks forward to seeing get underway.
"By the end of May we will have a plan put in place for revitalization of downtown," he said, mentioning that density needs to be added to the area. "Downtowns generally need new customers in order to survive. We're hoping, particularly in downtown, which is the major focus right now, to have a university district and that will provide a density in terms of students; 400 to a thousand new customers for downtown would be very nice.
And we would actually like to see condominium development in downtown in terms of density to add customers. Condominiums would be attractive to folks who perhaps may want to commute into Vancouver on the West Coast Express and you're then within walking distance of your way to work."
Getting down to business
Both Adlem and Banman are first-term mayors and both put a big emphasis on business. Adlem and his fellow district councillors want to make Mission the most business-friendly community in the Lower Mainland.
"We've taken some steps to streamline and accelerate the development process," offered Adlem as one example of what the district has done to attract new business. "We have what we call the 'A Team' and it's a group of district commission employees who are leaders in their areas. And if you're a developer coming in, before you put in a development, you sit down with the A Team and they can give you advice on what you need to do to come in and make the process work quickly. In terms or rezoning applications, in the past the average for a rezoning application to be completed was 79 days. In 2012 we had it down to 32. And subdivision applications, the average used to be 76 days and in 2012 we had it to 48. So, time is money for developers and we're trying to save them as much as we can."
The City of Abbotsford has similar objectives. Since Banman was elected in 2011, the waiting time for a building permit has been reduced from 10 weeks to three to four weeks.
"Our job is to help eliminate red tape and help people realize their dreams," he said. "We can't change rules, but we can eliminate and help guide you through them so that it's a more pleasant process. What Abbotsford really needs to be is business friendly. It's imperative that we create the most, the best possible and most sustainable conditions for businesses of all sizes to succeed."
