A week after City of North Vancouver council voted to begin cutting back red tape for home-based childcare business, council has voted down an application from a Carisbrook daycare to almost triple in size.
A split council turned down Little Einstein Group Child Care's application to turn the home at 549 West 28th St. from the current seven-child daycare into a 20-child operation.
Though the majority of neighbours in the area supported the application, according to a city staff report, homeowners from adjacent properties were opposed. The business would bring traffic chaos, gobble up limited parking and create an all-day disturbance in the area, they argued.
That was enough to persuade Couns. Rod Clark, Pam Bookham, Guy Heywood and Don Bell who voted the project down. Despite agreeing there is a need for more residential daycare in the city and that the proponent had an excellent track record, the "industrial" scale of the proposal was simply too much for the small lot, they agreed.
Couns. Linda Buchanan and Craig Keating, along with Mayor Darrell Mussatto hoped to send the application back to staff for further refinement.
Earlier this month, council voted to scale back the amount of consultation required to open a homebased daycare. Those changes will be brought before the public before being finalized.
