Residents have told the city they don't want another trailer court, but the mayor said the needs of many outweigh the wants of a few.

City council held a public hearing for Barry Bellchambers' proposed 45-lot trailer court at the corner of Range Road and Mountainview Drive on Monday evening.

Three residents complained the development, to be called the Malamute Saloon, would be too dense, unsightly, and remove greenspace.

Bellchambers said there is a clear need in Whitehorse for affordable housing, and that trumps esthetic concerns.

Mayor Bev Buckway agreed.

"The city's planning process is calling for higher density," she said after the council meeting. "In the big picture; it fits."

Porter Creek resident Nancy Huston told council it fits too tightly - like a can of sardines.

"Is it really appropriate for 45 units to be squished into just over four acres of land?" asked Huston, a former city clerk.

She asked council to reconsider re-zoning the entire parcel from UR-Undesignated Rural to RP-Residential Mobile Home Park, hoping that taking out 10 of the proposed 45 units would offset the appearance of a tight squeeze.

"I object to the unnecessary scarring and closing of that open space," she said.

Huston also wondered if Range Road faced an upgrade in the future, and whether that would mean widening the road further into the proposed trailer park's boundaries.

Council did not answer residents' questions, as procedure for a public hearing is only to allow residents to speak.

At the next council meeting, city staff will prepare a public hearing report in which residents' questions are researched and answered.

Northland Drive resident Pam Braun told council the trailer park could become one of six in that area, and that's too many.

Four are currently operated, and Braun said she suspected a residential parcel of Kwanlin Dun First Nation land would also become a trailer court.

"There's so much space in the Yukon, and we'll be cramped up like we live in a tenement city," said the 29-year Yukon resident.

"It used to be a little place of heaven out my back door, and now with all these changes, I shake my head."

Braun said her primary concern was conserving greenspace for wildlife use, although she also asked that an alleyway be created to separate the proposed trailer court from the Northland Trailer Park property.

"I don't want to fight city hall; I just want to see this trailer court go away," she said.

Northland Trailer Park manager Larry Chalifour wrote a letter to council saying he supports Bellchambers' development, so long as a 15-meter buffer was included between their two properties.

"Do what is the right thing for us, the residents of Northland Trailer Park," he wrote.

Bellchambers was present during the public hearing and approached council himself to respond to public concerns and answer councillors' questions.

The former hotel manager said he planned to buy the mobile homes in his future park and sell the developed lots or lease them.

He did not know what the ballpark figure would be, but said the units in the Takhini Mobile Home Park, which he also owns, sell for between $75,000 and $130,000.

"Right now, really, there's a tremendous need for lots and houses, and a tremendous need for them to be affordable," he said.

Local realty listing have only a handful of mobile home units on the market, all for under $150,000.

"I respect people's concerns, but there's a great concern for people in town about affordable housing," said Bellchambers.

He said that if Northland Trailer Park's owner had wanted a buffer so badly, he should have purchased the land himself in the 30 years it sat idle.

A fence dividing the properties would be fine by Bellchambers, as long as the cost for it was shared by both mobile home park owners.

Bellchambers also expressed concern that some Northlands residents had expanded their backyards onto the open space Bellchambers has applied for.

"Some mobile home owners have extended their yards onto the land illegally," he said.

The land is currently owned by the Yukon government. If council approves the re-zoning, the sale would see Bellchambers own the land and be allowed to develop it.

He said the proposal for 45 lots will not change, because anything fewer than 45 would not be economically feasible.

If council votes down his re zoning application and the sale from YTG does not go through, he will abandon the project, he told the Star.

The project has already garnered the Yukon Soci-economic Assessment Board's approval and made it through initial city planning evaluations.

The trailer court would be an attractive development, he said, and would follow all regulatory guidelines.

"We've worked very hard with your planning and technical people on this," he told council.

Buckway agreed with this point.

She said she recognized that in order for any proposal to reach the council approval stage, it must have gone through detailed examination by the city's planning department.

In weighing the concerns of the public with the city's own planning guides, Buckway said she will follow the written policies.

"If it falls within all the guidelines, it is not up to us to deny it because of emotional issues," she said.

The re-zoning application will be before council for a third reading and final vote at the Tuesday, March 25 meeting at 7:30 p.m.