A local land owner is seeking a rezoning approval to allow for a four-storey development along First Avenue, council was told Monday night.

Kayelle Enterprises is asking the city to rezone its four lots from commercial waterfront to mixed-used commercial, which would elevate the height restriction from two storeys to four.

City planner Zoe Morrison pointed out to council that the nearby Kwanlin Dun First Nation property is zoned CCC for a commercial community centre, which permits four storeys.

The city-owned former Motorways trucking property immediately north of the Kayelle lots carries a mixed-use waterfront designation and a three-storey height limit, she pointed out.

Morrison noted Kayelle also owns a lot next to the Blue Feather Youth Centre, directly behind its McCandless Building, and across the back lane from the Carpenter's Hall.

The lot is located on the border, but inside, the large downtown area designated mixed-used commercial, with a four-storey allowance.

Rezoning the four First Avenue lots from two storeys to four would allow the company to marry the five lots with the same designation that would not be out of sync with surrounding properties, Morrison suggested.

She noted that allowing the request would also provide the landowner with a great deal more flexibility in development options.

But she reminded council the issue of height restrictions was passionately debated by opposing sides during both the development of the Downtown Plan and the Waterfront Development Plan.

'If you allow this to go to four storeys, you can bet everybody along First Avenue will want to go to four storeys,' Coun. Dave Stockdale warned his council colleagues.

'I think it could open the door to everybody along Front Street.''

First reading of the proposed bylaw to approve the rezoning request is scheduled to go before city council this Monday, with a public hearing scheduled for Jan. 14, 2008.

Kayelle representative Anne King said the company's development plans are three to five years away, with nothing firm enough yet to even bring to an architect.

The company, however, recognizes the upshot in the economy and real estate market and wants to take advantage of it, she explained.

King said Kayelle Enterprises envisions a mix of retail, commercial office space, and residential, with retail on the ground floor, office space on the second and residential on the third and fourth floors.

Development, she said, would likely involve a mix of building heights. It wouldn't simply be a four-storey concrete monolith stretching from lot line to lot line, consuming every available centimetre of ground space on the five lots.

King said Kayelle is interested in a development that is attractive to the market place, and one that enhances the waterfront.

Raising the height restriction to four storeys, she said, would increase the viability of the future development.

King said future plans do not include keeping McCandless Building.