Approximately 250 rental apartment units are proposed for development on a large lot at Despard Avenue and Moilliet Street South in Parksville. The property belongs to District Group, a real estate development and asset management company based in Vancouver. President Michael Nygren told Parksville City Council on Monday night that his company’s proposal will help address a historically low rental vacancy.
“This is longterm supply that we’re proposing to have here,” Nygren said, adding units will vary in types and sizes and won’t focus on one particular age group or demographic.
“It will be a project that will happen in multiple phases,” Nygren said. “As far as the OCP and the rezoning amendment goes, it’s currently zoned for transitional residential, we’d like to change that to multi unit residential.”
Nygren said design plans will be sensitive to the fact there’s a single-family neighbourhood in close proximity to the lot.
“Moving buildings as far away from the single-family area as we can towards the corner of Despard and Moilliet. “We are still a long way from talking about architecture.”
Nygren said District Group have approximately 18 other projects on the go in different municipalities and that the Parksville proposal is very high on their list of priorities.
“We have somewhere around 2,500 to 3,000 rental units under various stages of development at the moment,” he said. “We have a very large focus on Vancouver Island. Both my business partner and myself grew up in Port Alberni and we have projects in Port Alberni, Comox, Parksville, Nanaimo and four in Greater Victoria. We very much like the Island.”