City council is being asked to change density and building height requirements in the Official Community Plan (OCP).

At their weekly meeting on Monday evening, council heard from senior planner Zoe Morrison.

She said city administration is recommending changes to the OCP to make the Downtown Plan a main visioning document in city core planning.

She said the amendments to the OCP are necessary so they don't conflict with the Downtown Plan.

'The Downtown Plan will now be the guiding document for any development that happens in the downtown,' Morrison said.

'Through this process, we've had lots of public engagement. The more complicated (amendments) have been debated throughout the process,' she said.

At the time of the plan's adoption in May 2006, council recognized the need to permit office buildings outside the downtown core, enabling the city to become more active in social issues and increasing conditional height restriction approvals downtown from six to eight storeys.

The new amendments council is being asked to consider include:

amending the downtown area land use designation map to extend mixed use north from Wheeler to Ray Street, north from Ogilvie Street and west of Fourth Avenue;

changing the OCP to refer to the downtown area as an area bounded by the Robert Service Way to the south, Marwell industrial area to the north; the escarpment to the west and the Yukon River to the east;

recognizing the single-family residential nature of Old Town by eliminating multi-family residential as a land use in the residential-downtown designation;

removing specific density numbers from policy 7.8.5 of the OCP;

restricting hotel accommodations to the central area of downtown;

putting a minimum business size in the city's big box district to encourage smaller-scale businesses to locate in the downtown core; and

permitting stand-alone multi-family residential buildings on the riverfront.

Morrison said the amendments would direct the city in a number of ways. Those include restricting smaller stores to the downtown core and eliminating the construction of more strip malls, encouraging development in the city's north end, and leaving Old Town's single-family character.