C1: General Commercial

What the zone allows

Homes allowed

Apartments, or homes with a business: upstairs or downstairs with their own street entrance, or one on the ground floor for the owner or manager; a house only on a lot that had one, or one being lawfully built, on June 30, 2021 (the day of the Lytton fire)

Main uses

Shops and shopping centre, offices, restaurant, pub, hotel or motel, service station, entertainment and indoor recreation, personal, professional and general services, bus and taxi depot, funeral parlour, public assembly, tourist information, apartments

Smallest lot for a subdivision

205 m², 6.7 m wide

Height limit

Main building 10 m, accessory buildings 6.2 m

Setbacks

Rear 4.5 m; the zone sets no front or side setback

Homes above or below the ground floor need their own entrance from a ground-floor door on a public street (s. 8.3). A house rebuilt under s. 8.6 meets every other rule of the bylaw.

A home on the ground floor is for the owner or manager and their household: one only, at the back of the building with its own entrance from the rear or side, up to 150 m² (s. 8.4).

Service stations: pumps 4.5 m from lot lines, servicing indoors, the lot paved, screening 1 m tall next to residential lots, and no home combined with the service station (s. 8.5).

Each home has at least 48.3 m² of floor area.

"Tourist accommodation" here means a hotel or motel registered for the provincial hotel room tax, with a lobby and guest register, staff on duty at all times and a restaurant on the lot (s. 1); it doesn't cover renting out a house.

The bylaw doesn't list vacation or short-term rental, or bed and breakfast, as a use in this zone. Ask the Village before renting a home short term.

Outdoor storage is screened by a fence or structure up to 2.4 m; next to an R1 lot, a solid wood fence 1.8 to 2.4 m tall runs along the lot line (s. 3.24). The Village can waive off-street parking in a C zone where on-street parking will do (Schedule C).

One main building per lot (s. 3.3).

No accessory building goes up before the main building (s. 3.6). Accessory buildings without a suite total at most 10% of the lot or half the main building's floor area, whichever is less (s. 3.7), stand 1.8 m from the main building, and sit no closer to the front lot line than it does (ss. 3.8, 3.9).

Fences up to 1.8 m on rear and interior side lot lines and 1.3 m on front and exterior side lot lines; on a corner lot, nothing over 0.9 m in the 6 m sight triangle at the corner (ss. 3.10, 3.19).

For a new lot, the minimum area grows to keep driveways at 18% grade or less, and by the area of any watercourse crossing it plus 7 m each side, and of any right-of-way over 3 m wide (s. 3.22).

Heights are measured from grade (the lowest of the walls' average ground levels) to the top of a flat roof, the deck line of a mansard roof, or between the eaves and ridge of a pitched roof (s. 1).

Every zone also allows parks, public services and public uses such as roads, utility lines and pump stations (s. 3.2).

Floodplain (Schedule B): no building within 30 m of the top of the bank of the Fraser and Thompson rivers, 15 m of Lytton Creek or any other watercourse, or 7.5 m of a lake, pond or dike. Floors of living, business or storage space sit at least 8 m above the Fraser and Thompson rivers' high water mark and 1.5 m above that of Lytton Creek, other streams and standing water; on an alluvial fan an engineer designs the foundations. Renovations, additions under 25% of the floor area, garages and carports, and most farm buildings are exempt from the floor level.

Site-specific exceptions listed in the bylaw by legal description can add or change uses for one property, and development permit areas, the ALR and building rules apply on top. Confirm with the Village of Lytton (planning@lytton.ca) before you buy or build.

Source: Village of Lytton Zoning Bylaw No. 484, 1998 (summarised in our words); zone map: Open Government Licence – Thompson-Nicola Regional District.