A long-term plan for Marpole is set to go before Vancouver city council Wednesday (April 2), and this time the revised strategy appears to have more support from residents who rallied against previous proposals for the neighbourhood.

Mike Burdick, a spokesperson for the Marpole Residents Coalition, said the group is “generally in favour of the plan”.

“We’re a lot happier with this draft than we were with the plan that was going to be approved on October 23rd,” he told the Straight by phone. “We were able to stave that off and get something more palatable.”

But, he added, “it’s not perfect—it’ll never be perfect. And nobody’s ever going to agree 100 percent”.

Members of the group still have concerns about some of the city’s proposals, he noted, including how local infrastructure will accommodate the projected population growth in the area.

“We were successful in removing roughly 85 percent of the single-family homes out of the rezoning,” he said.

“So we accomplished our goal in terms of that’s what we had set out to do, but in that time, there were a lot of other things that popped up that we weren’t really aware of, things that are happening in our community which we are not in favour of, and we don’t think that the city is adequately preparing for those changes.”

Assistant director of planning Matt Shillito noted the document incorporates a public benefits strategy that includes plans for upgrading community facilities such as the community centre, library, neighbourhood house, and providing new parks space, including a new 10-acre park near the Fraser River.

Shillito said while transit and school funding are not within the city’s direct jurisdiction, the city has “worked closely” with the school board and TransLink on those issues.

“They’re important elements that we’ve looked at as part of the planning, and we continue to work with the school board staff for strategies to upgrade school capacities as that becomes necessary over time, and we are in constant dialogue with TransLink over things like the capacity of the Canada Line,” he said in a phone interview.

He added that the city has made “significant changes” to the plan since a draft was released last June.

“We heard in response to that draft, very clearly from the community that there was concern about the areas of single-family zoning that were proposed for change,” he said.

Burdick said his group was “very pleased” with the consultation it received from the city after staging protests against the previous version.

City council is scheduled to hear from staff and members of the public on the plan at 2 p.m. Wednesday.

The document outlines a projected 52 percent growth in population by 2041, from 24,000 to 36,500 people, and an 81 percent increase in jobs in the community over the next 30 years.

According to statistics cited in the plan, Marpole has an older population than the city as a whole, with the largest group consisting of people between the ages of 45 and 64. The proportion of recent immigrants in the neighbourhood is also higher, at nine percent of the population, compared to seven percent city-wide, and 24 percent of the population lives in a low-income household.