Horseshoe Bay resident John Noble felt joy and relief when he heard the council had rejected the rezoning for the former church site on Wellington Avenue.
But there is also anxiety underpinning that triumph.
Noble was among those who organised, rallied and led a number of community members against the Tantalus Gardens project. He is concerned the push for density in Horseshoe Bay would continue. The Local Area Planning process, he says, is another ruse to push development in the area.
“The next battle you will see involves the Horseshoe Bay Local Area Plan, the LAP. The District plans to change the border for zoning, to push the Horseshoe Bay border further into Whytecliff and Gleneagles, and to gobble up St. Monica’s church and the neighbouring Tantalus Park,” he says.
The majority of the community, he says, would be against change of existing zoning borders.
For now, however, Noble is just happy to know the hard work he and others had put in opposing the project eventually convinced four West Vancouver councillors to give voice to their concerns and vote against the project.
“It has been hard work for the whole year. We wrote letters, started a Facebook page and paid Canada Post to send letters to 185 homes. We spoke to neighbours and people out for a walk or pushing the prams. Horseshoe Bay is a very special place and we don’t want to lose the countryside feel,” he says.
Noble says people showing up and conveying their views to the council eventually made a difference.
“Raising awareness about it also made a difference. Now the developers watching this know that there are areas in the community where there is going to be a pushback,” he said.
Sheona McDonald too is pleased at the decision, although she says the decision just doesn’t feel like a victory. “The Mayor’s behaviour wasn’t the most professional behaviour considering how she pushed the developer’s agenda. It has restored some faith in democracy but the whole process was daunting and it just didn’t feel clean,” she says.
McDonald says she was apathetic in the beginning, but then eventually started a petition to oppose the project that eventually garnered over 1,000 signatures.
She says she initially didn’t pay attention, but was surprised to hear the suggestion that over 80 per cent of the community supported the project.
“I thought that can’t be right and if it is then I’m really missing the mark. I put the petition out to ask that question and there was a landslide of people concerned with this development,” she says.
McDonald, along with other community members, emailed and called councillors, spent time researching the OCP and the history of the church as a meeting space, wrote and re-wrote emails and documents and organised people on the project.
Joining her was Horseshoe Bay resident Kevin Faw who even offered to buy the land from the developer so it could be reimagined as a communal space, just the way it was intended.
Together, they launched a website to present a concrete vision of what the space might look like. McDonald is happy that the council listened to residents, but the process has left a bitter aftertaste and anxiety about future developments in the community.
“It seems like throwing a pebble in the dam,” she says.
Capitalism is a joke. Corporations have too much power. Lobbyists for industries are scabs. Developers are leeches. The banking industry is a coconspirator.
This isn’t how communities were intended to work.
Something has to fundamentally change.
Pitchforks, fire, and citizens taking back their power has to happen or further societal collapse is imminent.
This has been shown to be the pattern for multiple generations. It will happen again soon.
Choose a side. If you are employed or have gained wealth in any of the above don’t be surprised when they come for you.
Those just learning about the mechanisms of municipal politics will find out soon enough – it is a freaking whack a mole game.
As soon as you have addressed one issue another pops up.
What we need is for both staff and elected officials to truly represent citizen interests. Hard? Yes. Impossible? No. This will entail substantive changes to 1) The Community Engagement process so it no longer directs participants to pre-determined conclusion(s), and 2) The development process so local citizens can become informed and involved in projects from the get-go – not after they have been working with District Staff for in some instances – years.
All of us – council, citizens, developers – deserve clearly defined processes (and zoning) where nobody is forced to play ‘Let’s Make a Deal!”
1954-55, earlier and later, a desired treat was found at Sewell’s. The best tasting greasy French Fries ever! While summering on Bowen and working as the hotel’s sports “go-fer” including running the Ski-boat, caring for the clay courts, collecting wharfage from those overnight tie-ups at the hotel’s float, I was at Horseshoe Bay 2-3 visits weekly for supplies. The Bay was for my lifetime there, a very country- marine place bent upon the goings and comings of the water-taxi boats along with the old and then newer Ferry activity ; plus the supplying to the yachts and locals over on the islands and up on the peninsula. One always felt included. Going forward to 2015, I came by for a visit, having long ago chosen to live in Haiti and then Florida. I was naively shocked! What happened. Oh yeah! Condos, gentrification, corporate hunger being satiated at the locals expense. If you want an ugly “Miami style” appearance then keep on building. Nothing that has been achieved seems to have made the Bay any more inviting. Au contraire! Wealth is not good for all of the ruptures and corruption that it creates. Look at it this way, the kids of the kids will never smell french-fries blended into a sea fog that curls around the point while a few folks move their stuff to a waiting boat island bound. Just too many people! Next thing they’ll be wanting to condo right across Gibson’s and up to Lund. Sorry, it is sickening to my sole.
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