Bowen Bulletin

It’s time once again to drop in on the ongoing saga of the Cape Roger Curtis development process. The Cape is a 640 acre parcel of land that forms the south-western tip of Bowen Island. For the last three years, the developers who recently purchased it have been educating the humble folk of Bowen Island on how to get what you want while making the other guy think that he is getting what he wants. The first part of the lesson consisted of promising a wonderful development while forging ahead with a crummy development proposal. The rationale being that the crummy proposal would only go ahead if the powers that be didn’t see the virtue in the wonderful development promised. Of course some rogue elements in the community made it impossible for the wonderful promised development to go ahead. The next lesson was to teach the community that what they thought was theirs was, in fact, private property. Security trailers were hauled to the site, chain link fences built, signs erected and the RCMP was asked to help them enforce their property rights.

Then came the strategy switch. The developer had correctly ascertained who the power players were in the community. It was time to move on to the next phase. The previous consultants were gone. The gates were thrown open and everybody was invited to an old fashioned community celebration with their new friends. The new team correctly determined that the environmentalist lobby was in charge at city hall and so the next instalment of our saga commences. The new plan was presented in mid September. They mapped out the waterfront, the coastal bluffs, the ecologically sensitive areas and the stream corridors and then agreed to exclude those areas from their development. In fact they said that over 60% of the property would be left in the public domain. They had obviously read the wish list of the Cape Roger Curtis Trust Society and went a very long way to accommodate them. 

The 40% of the property scheduled for development would include low density rural residential, but also higher density residential as one approached their new seaside village. It would be anchored by what looked like a multilevel seniors care facility and a hotel. Servicing these would be a grocery store, a small commercial area, and staff housing. Of course, the designations on the plans were things like affordable housing and live/work areas but that was to be expected. At that point, it looked good; an institution complete with the accompanying support facilities and some residential units in exchange for over 300 acres of parkland. It made many community members salivate. But the proposal didn’t end there. It included a school site, community centre, playing field and outdoor theatre. Whether they were agreeing to pay for any of these things or if they were just raw land wasn’t discussed. They went further. Somebody writing the proposal realized that buying off the parks lobby wasn’t enough. The destination seniors’ facility had hit a whole bunch of the right buttons. The economic development types would be happy about the hotel and seaside village but the global warming people were going to be a hard sell. So somebody figured out how many different neighbourhoods there were on the island and where they were. After analyzing how far everybody lived from everyone else they came up with the argument that their development could help to cut the automobile use on Bowen in half. I kid you not. 

This is where you kind of wish that they had stopped while they were ahead. This is where they reminded us that we’re dealing with people who are trying very hard to make arguments that convince enough Bowen Islanders (or at least enough members of council) that their proposal is so good that we should give them permission to make a fabulous amount of profit.  Personally, I don’t mind if they make a fabulous amount of profit. I also don’t mind if they make a very modest profit and have the greatest possible positive impact on Bowen. I raise this issue now because their proposals don’t yet include the number of low density, single family, commuter oriented residential lots that they want to create. These lots will sell for anything from $400,000 to well over $1,000,000 each so the developer is working hard to figure out how many of them can be created. Conversely, every commuter created represents a unit of traffic going along Adams Road during ferry loading and unloading times; another car competing for space on the ferry and firmly locking us into the car-oriented commuter suburb category. The difference between creating 50 and 150 of these lots is considerable. There are other examples where their proposals are not entirely genuine but the 50% reduction in auto use is the best example. Developers push the buttons of the people in the communities they want to invade. At the end of the day, the developers of Cape Roger Curtis will proceed with their development. We will have to pay for the parkland they are offering with increased density on the balance of the property. But they have opened the door to the type of development that we really need if we wish to become an economically sustainable community. Their concept of a destination seniors’ facility is brilliant. If they can actually deliver it and build their development proposal around it, we may have the basis for a serious negotiation.