Approval is Imminent for Redwood Heights Neighbourhood Plan
The stage 2 neighbourhood plan for South Surrey’s Redwood Heights is expected to receive approval when it goes before Surrey City council in February.
After 15 years of stop and go, there is finally a light at the end of the tunnel for the Redwood Heights (“Grandview Area 4”) neighbourhood plan. The forthcoming plan approval will establish a quantifiable timeline to development, which already has developers and investors paying close attention to Redwood Heights again. It was similar types of plan progress that created the flurry of land purchases in South Surrey’s Grandview Area 2 and 3, or more recently Anniedale-Tynehead in North Surrey.
While the stage 2 plan and the council report have been complete since summer 2018, Council asked planning staff to hold off presenting it until the new Council’s planning priorities could be identified and the future school site could be acquired. On December 16th, 2019, the application to subdivide land for the future elementary school received conditional approval and the School Board’s purchase of that land is rumored to complete in March of this year. With the school site prerequisite satisfied, planning staff has been cleared to present the stage 2 plan to council for approval.
Sanitary servicing for Redwood Heights has been a significant hurdle from the outset of this planning process and it has largely been resolved as well (key right of ways have been secured). A well-known consulting group has been engaged to organize the developer group who will front-end the costs of the required pump station and force main. Redwood Heights has the benefit of over 200 acres being held by only 4 developer/investor groups, making cost-share coordination far more likely than in other areas where ownership is more fractured.
An approved neighbourhood plan, a completed acquisition of the prerequisite school site, and key sanitary servicing hurdles resolved, would mean we could expect to see the first tranche of development applications to be submitted in a matter of months.
If you want to find out more about the Redwood Heights neighbourhood plan, don’t hesitate to contact me or visit the City of Surrey’s dedicated webpage, HERE.
