by Asha Rehnberg
Bowen Island Undercurrent, October 5, 2007
Earlier this year the owners of Cape Roger Curtis set aside their contentious 10-acre lots subdivision application and voluntarily entered into a comprehensive rezoning process. As part of that process they have now held two public meetings.
As part of that process, they held their first public meeting in July to share their planners’ vision for what makes a “sustainable community” and how they are hoping to help Bowen achieve its sustainability goals by creating a well-thought-out secondary village at Cape Roger Curtis.
On Sept. 19, the owners sponsored their second public meeting to unveil a preliminary concept for their development and to explain how they had arrived at that plan. (See maps and rationale on the ‘Events’ section of their website at www.caperogercurtis.com.)
In brief, they are offering to create a park that encompasses up to 60 per cent of the Cape and 100 per cent of its shoreline.
The plan for the secondary village shows roughly where development clusters might be along a loop road, but does not disclose proposed densities. Clusters would contain a variety of residential lot sizes, some affordable housing (probably townhouses), senior housing, a school, a store, an outdoor amphitheatre, a hotel, one or more community buildings, a spiritual retreat center, a memorial garden, a community garden, at least one playground/ballfield and a community wastewater treatment facility.
They are optimistic about obtaining an alternative access route to the proposed village to avoid using either Whitesails or an extension of Thompson Road, but this is not yet definite.
Lacking more concrete information from ownership, Stephen Foster of the Cape Roger Trust Society estimates the proposal would probably yield 1,500 people travelling to and from such a village every day once the project is fully built out. That’s a lot of people, dogs, cats, cars and trucks whose activities would impact the currently quiet, largely unsullied wilderness that so many have fought hard to conserve.
Many at the Sept. 19 meeting thanked the owners for the generosity and vision of their park offer. Although clearly the owners are gambling that in exchange they will be granted high density in the remaining 40 per cent, listeners nonetheless acknowledged the planning team’s work as a bona fide effort to design a sustainable community on Bowen. Many also said that this was a “great start” and that now it was our turn to decide whether we really want a secondary village at Cape Roger Curtis and/or what amenities in the proposal might be better sited in Snug Cove or somewhere other than at the Cape. Density transfers, partnership with a neighboring landowner, community buy-out of selected clusters to reduce the development’s footprint, and other ideas were floated in the discussion that ensued.
Archived materials
Posts
- Fall 2009 update
- Legal Opinion on CRC Subdivision Application
- Parks Canada Initiative – Fall/Winter 2009
- Disappointment: The Owner’s New Proposal for Cape Roger Curtis
- Cape Trust Society praised for quality of work
- Fifty-eight-lot subdivision application for the Cape shouldn’t be on the table
- Cape Roger Curtis Trust Society Launches Wild Coast Plan 2
- CRC Plan Beyond Comprehensive
- Bowen agleam in red and green
- Wild Coast Plan 2
Documents
- Why environmental inventories are insufficient for conservation planning: Comments on the 2008 PGL report on CRC
- Four-legged friend or foe? Dog walking displaces native birds from natural areas
- Mitigating and adapting to Climate Change through conservation of nature
- CRC writer ignored biological issues
- Cape Roger Curtis Biophysical Summary
- Overview Environmental Inventory
- Success Stories Show Park at Cape Roger Curtis Not Impossible
- Council Resolution Defining the Public Interest in Cape Roger Curtis
- Follow up from Dr. Karel Klinka’s Assessment of the Cape Roger Curtis Property
- Ecological Assessment and Considerations in Developing the Cape Roger Curtis Property
Letters
- CRC Trust Society makes clear its position
- Trust Society comments on Neighbourhood Plan of September 2008
- Trust Society Comments on Ekistics’ Preliminary Neighbourhood Plan and Implementation Options
- CRC Transportation Study Points to the Need for an OCP Review
- It’s all in the numbers-–hundreds of houses are just too many
- Council encouraged to instate DCCs
- Developers should be held to task
- Walk Your Talk Inside and Outside
- CRC developers upped ante unacceptable
- Transparent or veiled?