A high-ropes obstacle course is planned for the parking lot adjacent to the Squamish Adventure Centre in time for summer.
Council unanimously passed third reading of a zoning amendment package, including an amendment for the parking lot adjacent to the centre, that could pave the way for the first ropes-course tower in Canada by company Kristall Turm.
The zoning had to be changed in order for the district and the company to enter into a proposed five-year lease agreement on the land, according to district staff.
Local developer Mario Gomes is the president of the North American arm of Kristall Turm, the company responsible for the octagon-shaped metal and wood activity towers.
“I think we can definitely use more family attractions in Squamish,” Gomes said.
The proposed all-ages, 15-metre-high course is to include 90 elements or activities, company marketer Zamon Kingi told The Squamish Chief.
The higher up in the metal tower a participant goes, the harder the activities will become, he said. Up to 120 people can be simultaneously on the course, he said.
“It is all about the experience.”
Twenty such structures are set up in locations around the world, including in Berlin and Turkey, Kingi said. About two million people have used the parks with “zero accidents, zero fatalities,” Kingi said.
This would be the first such park in Canada, he said.
The structure itself would take up one-quarter of an acre of the current overflow parking lot.
Gomes said the company is currently manufacturing within Squamish all the parts for the parks across the continent. “We do sell this park across North America… it is a rec tech company… we have been renting a building at the rail yards.”
Ten employees are currently employed with the company in Squamish, according Gomes.
Rock climber Toby Foord-Kelcey, chair of the Smoke Bluffs Committee, voiced his objection to the proposal during a public hearing for the zoning bylaw amendment package held earlier in Tuesday’s meeting.
“They want to build a 50-foot tall steel tower on which to operate a high ropes course on land that is currently parking space,” he said, adding objections were the lack of consultation around the proposal and the impact the business would have on parking capacity in the area.
Foord-Kelcey said he and members of the committee had not been aware of the proposal until a few days prior to the public hearing. “In the summer months in recent years, that lot has been really heavily used, sometimes completely full,” he said, adding climbers park at the lot before heading up to climb in the Smokes Bluffs. “These are the kind of people who are repeat visitors to Squamish, who council and district should value.”
Visitors won’t stop coming, Foord-Kelcey said, but they will no longer have a designated place to park if the business is allowed to set up.
Chris Small, president of the Squamish Access Society, also voiced similar concerns over losing parking around the Squamish Adventure Centre.
Councillor Susan Chapelle echoed the sentiments of Foord-Kelcey and Smith and also said Squamish is known as being “unscripted,” so residents should be supporting natural recreation. Ultimately, though, she said she didn’t want to “throw the baby out with the bathwater” and turn down the entire zoning amendment package due to her objections over the Squamish Adventure Centre parking lot issue, so she voted in favour of third reading.
In terms of public consultation, Jonas Velaniskis, the district’s director of development services, acknowledged the details of the business proposal were not available at the open house, but instead the event dealt with the more high-level consequences of the proposed zoning changes.
Gomes stressed that rezoning was just the beginning; there are other approvals the proposal has to go through, such as the development permit process.
“It doesn’t mean that the zoning gets changed and we get approved, because it could be anybody else there,” he said. “Whether we will have our tower in this parking lot or not, we still very much support having this zoning changed to recreation because we think this is a great location to have some recreation there.”
