The City of North Vancouver is going to court to try to force owners of an apartment building to bring four long-standing illegal suites into compliance.
The dispute about illegal suites in the building at 200 East 12th Street goes back over three decades, spans several owners and includes at least one previous court action.
This month, the city once again filed papers in B.C. Supreme Court, asking for an order forcing the owners to either remove the four ground floor units, or to take steps to upgrade the apartments to meet building code requirements.
"Something had to be done," said Percy Melville, manager of inspections for the city's planning department. "We'd waited long enough."
The building was first built in 1958 as an 18-unit apartment building. But sometime over the next 20 years, the original owners converted a foyer, laundry room and games rooms on the ground floor into four additional apartments, without getting any permits from the city.
In 2004, the city received a complaint from one of the building residents, who voiced concern that changes to the building - which resulted in the entrance being changed from 12th street to St. George's - might cause problems for emergency crews.
At first the new owner, a representative of Edka Investco Inc., refused to discuss the issue, saying the city had assured her there were no illegal suites in the building when she bought it.
Talks later began to legalize the suites. "We've met on numerous occasions with her and her solicitor," said Melville.
But the upgrades never took place.
Susan Kabela, the representative for Edka Investco Inc., declined to comment on the city's court action.
The issue of enforcement against illegal suites has recently proved a hot-button topic for the city.
In November, Coun. Rod Clark abruptly reversed his position in votes on two illegal four plexes.
At issue in those cases are 330 East 14th St., owned by the Pucci family, and 263 West Sixth St., owned by Arnold Wallner. Both buildings are duplexes, each with a pair of illegal secondary suites. Both have been on the city's radar for as long as two decades, but in each case, the landlords have managed to obstruct, postpone and otherwise frustrate attempts by the city to have the suites removed.
City staff asked council permission to get a court order to remove the suites in Wallner's building.
But Clark - who had previously voted to enforce the bylaws - opted to instead allow Wallner to bring his building into legal compliance, arguing the city's "don't-ask-don't-tell" policy on illegal suites was "not a policy at all, it's turning a blind eye."
Melville said this week, however, that resolving the issue in the Wallner building may not be that easy.
Following the council vote, city staff inspected the building. "We went through it and found out there were a fairly significant number of issues," he said.
Melville said it turns out it would very difficult to convert Wallner's duplex into a fourplex "without spending a small fortune," mainly because of B.C. Building Code fire safety requirements.
He said Wallner still has the option of looking into "alternative solutions" that would satisfy the building code. If that can't be arranged, however, Melville said he'll still have to take out the illegal suites.
A rezoning application is proceeding on the East 14th Street fourplex.
