Choked streets, petty crime, mailbox thefts, too few sidewalks and crowded schools: if you live in Albion, one or another is bound to have affected you.
The fast-growing area in east Maple Ridge even drew the focus of Mayor Nicole Read during November’s municipal election.
Albion is one of the city’s “incomplete communities,” she said.
It needs to be an area of focus during a review of Maple Ridge’s official community plan.
During her inaugural speech, she promised to work tirelessly to get a new elementary school built there so parents no longer have to drive kilometres to get their kids to school.
But houses continue to be built, roads and sidewalks are following them, and there’s even word that a new school may not be as far off in the future as thought.
So is Albion improving?
Depends on you talk to.
Wilf McIntyre, who’s lived on 100th Avenue for a dozen years, says the non-stop development still worries him.
And he doesn’t see it getting better.
“It’s still congested. 240th Street is a nightmare.”
People park in front of driveways when they pick up their kids at Albion elementary. Residents clog roads and back alleys with parked vehicles, possibly blocking access to fire trucks. The new townhouses going in behind his house and on the west side of 240th Street will only make it worse.
As it is now, motorists exiting Hill Street on to 240th already create lineups.
When 240th Street is eventually widened to four lanes, what happens to the roadside parking spots? McIntyre asks.
Crime used to be an issue as well, until he helped form a Block Watch group, in which neighbours look out for each other.
“It’s made a big difference here. It pulls the people together.”
For Albion Neighbours Facebook group founder Sean Orcutt, life in the cozy suburb, where your neighbour’s kitchen window is spitting distance from yours, is not all gloom.
There is community spirit that grows from people being forced to talk to each other.
“The small-lot size, it actually works in our favour. We know each other more than other people do,” Orcutt said.
Many parking spots on the small lots have disappeared as people use them for other purposes, forcing cars on to the narrow streets. But people are adjusting to that and neighbours work together to ease parking pains.
And as the gaps in roads and sidewalks are filled in as development proceeds, the area is improving.
Orcutt would prefer, though, the opposite approach, where the city installs the roads and sidewalks first, rather than waiting for the builders. He’s also waiting for an Albion community hall, not replaced since the old one next to Albion elementary was knocked down in 2010.
Past council candidate and Albion resident of 14 years, Elizabeth Taylor has fought for replacement for Albion hall. But any location needs to be accessible.
Taylor says she doesn’t get good value for her property tax dollar, pointing out her tax bill of about $3,500 for her small home is the same as a million dollar home on West 17th Avenue in Vancouver.
If one improvement could be made, it would be city-wide garbage collection, to spare the three or four separate private garbage trucks from now rumbling along narrow Albion roads.
“I really believe we have to figure out the garbage thing,” she said.
“I like my home. I like where I live. But the thing is, it’s not giving me anything for my [taxation] money,” adding she may leave Maple Ridge in a few years.
According to Maple Ridge planning director Christine Carter, the Albion area plan, now about 20 years old, received a mixed reaction when it was reviewed in 2013.
The plan calls for a total population of 10,250, with a total number of 4,100 housing units.
With the current population of just under 7,000 people, the area is approaching build out.
People have had a range of views, she added. Some people like the small lots, about 213 sq. metres, because they’re an affordable option to townhouses.
“It’s been ideal for young families. When you have density, you have congestion,” which can lead to parking issues.
Each Albion lot has room for parking in the back and it’s residents’ choice if they want to use that for other purposes and park on the street.
Andrew Anderson, part of Albion Neighbours, says life in the east Maple Ridge suburb is getting better, “due to the people who live in the neighbourhood.” There will always be squabbles over parking places, he says.
“I’m very happy with Albion and the direction it’s going.
“At the core, it’s a good, family-oriented neighbourhood and I see it better.”
As part of that brighter future, he agrees with commercial development of the Albion Industrial Area, on the south side of Lougheed Highway. Densification and redevelopment of western suburbs in Maple Ridge could see school populations there rise, making it easier for Maple Ridge’s school district to receive Ministry of Education funding for a school in Albion, he added.
But a new elementary school in Albion, on 104th Avenue, could be along sooner than thought, says trustee Dave Rempel.
The ministry now accepts there’s an east-west division in Maple Ridge and may be willing to be flexible in its policy of linking school populations in other parts of district when it considers new school construction in the same district.
“The argument has been made, they’ve been accepted. The ministry just hasn’t moved on the funding.”
The school district has been looking for close to $14 million in capital funding from the provincial government for more than five years to build a new elementary school, with a population of about 400, in Albion.
The school district already owns property on 104th Avenue, where it intends to build the new school.
In March 2011, the provincial government gave the project a “high” rating and placed it within the Ministry of Education’s five-year capital plan.
“Our problem with the funding for the schools, we’re fighting Langley and Surrey mostly. We’ve been pushing pretty hard.”