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By MARK NIELSEN
Citizen staff
City council got a first look Monday night at three core proposals for redeveloping the Prince George Golf and Curling Club lands.
The proposals, from which one will form a long-term neighbourhood plan for the area, also cover the Pine Valley Golf Centre and the Pine Centre Mall, and they vary according to their respective mixtures of residential and commercial uses.
All three call for relocating the Pine Valley Golf Centre to the current PGGCC course, where an 18-hole par three golf course, and possibly a driving range, would be built over 19 hectares (47 acres), up from 13.4 ha. (33 acres) at the current location. The remaining 8.5 ha. (23 acres) of PGCC golf course would be redeveloped into medium-density residential – townhouses and four-storey condominiums.
All three also keep the PGGCC clubhouse in place and relocating the city's tennis courts to the site, moving the Playhouse Theatre “to a suitable location at an appropriate time,” establishing an auto mall along Highway 16, bringing a hotel to the vicinity of the Highway 16-97 intersection to act as a “gateway” landmark, expanding Pine Centre Mall to the east by four ha. (10 acres) and designating 1.3 ha. (three acres) just west of Pine Centre for seniors independent living.
New large-format retail would be part of all three options, but the scale would be determined by the ability of the area's road network to handle the traffic volume and whether it would compromise redevelopment of the city's downtown.
Where they differ the greatest is on what to do with the Pine Valley Golf Centre. The options range from dedicating the entire 13.4-hectare (33 acre) site to commercial to limiting that use to 4 ha. (10 acres) in the southwest corner adjacent to Costco, Wood Weaton Chevrolet Cadillac and Real Canadian Superstore and dedicating the rest to a mixture of medium density residential – townhouses and four-story condominiums.
A middle option calls for 6 ha. (15 acres) of commercial but also calls for raising the total amount of land dedicated to the automall to 20 ha. (50 acres) from to 16 ha. (40 acres) proposed in the two other proposals.
There are minor differences between the proposals over the configuration of the golf course and residential development over the old PGGCC land and the shape of the hotel and clubhouse sites.
A public open house will be part of the consultation process for coming up with a final plan, which in all will cover 78 ha. (193 acres)
The PGGCC, which is moving to a new home off Foothills Boulevard north of the Nechako River has had trouble finding a buyer for its old site largely over uncertainty about what mixture of development would be acceptable to city hall.
After three aborted attempts for the PGGCC to close a sale, the city agreed to step in and develop a neighbourhood plan for the site, usually the responsibility of the landowner and the developers.
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