If your garage is bulging with junk, there’s no place left for your stuff and you’re on the verge of being forced to clean the place up – help might be on the way.
The City of North Vancouver is considering letting homeowners put a cellar underneath their garage to add more storage space, pending the results of an upcoming public hearing.
Garages are limited to one level plus a crawlspace in the city, but staff have suggested allowing a 600-square-foot (55-square-metre) lair beneath a 600-square-foot garage. However, several councillors were adamant the cellars not be slyly turned into residential suites. Coun. Rod Clark suggested forbidding windows and plumbing in the subterranean storage spaces.
The cellars could be a maximum of 8.5 feet (2.6 m) tall. The maximum height of a crawlspace is four feet (1.2 m). When building a 600-square-foot garage, the addition of a like-sized cellar will boost costs by between $35,000 to $60,000, according to city staff. A public hearing on the issue is tentatively pencilled in for April.
