Is capitalism winning out over community values when it comes to development in Squamish? This question is at the heart of some of the recent angst heard wherever people gather around town and on local online forums.
Two Squamish men’s recent vocal concerns echo much of what can currently be overheard in coffee shops and over backyard fences regarding Squamish’s current rash of development proposals.
Adam Smith spearheads the Keep Garibaldi Green group, which is lobbying council to keep the former Garibaldi Springs golf course a greenway corridor as laid out in the current Official Community Plan.
“Managing the development and the growth in this town effectively and keeping it still the town that we all want to live in is pretty much the number one hot topic,” Smith said. “How are we going to manage this? All of a sudden people are living in a different town than they were two or three years ago.”
Polygon Homes has proposed building an approximately 460-unit housing development on the former golf course property.
“We are opposed to council approving a condo/townhouse development on this environmentally sensitive land while there is ample land suitable for development of infill housing elsewhere in Squamish,” reads an online Change.org petition that Smith plans to deliver to council.
Close to 600 people had signed the petition by the end of last week.
Smith hopes to have signatures from 10 per cent of the population of Squamish by time Polygon comes before council again, likely in July.
“I think that is a reasonable number to expect council to act on behalf of community as a whole,” he said. “This isn’t a small group of people who are ‘not in my back yard.’ This is a community issue.”
The new housing isn’t needed, Smith said. By his calculations there are more than 6,000 units in the pipeline to be built, without the Polygon development. Though we are currently in a housing crunch, it won’t last given what is coming, Smith said.
“We are targeting to double our population in 15 years with only what we can see right now,” Smith said.
Mayor Patricia Heintzman said often those who comment on proposed projects are neighbours to it. The whole community should be deliberating on big projects like what is proposed for the golf course, as well as the Cheekye Fan and the Cheema lands in the Garibaldi Highlands.
They impact almost everyone, she said.
In terms of Polygon, the developer will come before council with a revised plan in July.
“I don’t want to prejudge that,” she said. “We legally have an obligation to consider things so that is what council will do.”
She also said, in addition to negative feedback, the District has heard positive support for the Polygon project.
Those 6,000 units Smith references aren’t all under construction and housing of various types by various developers is needed, she said.
“The challenge with a town our size is you have large developers who control large pieces of land and that is what most of our development is,” she said. “If you only have two or three large developers in town they control the markets more. There isn’t enough competition and they can withhold to keep housing prices up, to deplete the market. Once you get more viable and diverse developers out there, there’s more competition and ideally the prices go down.”
Max Bitel, who blogs about local development options, feels Squamish is at an important crossroads.
He lobbied for people to support option three during the recent Official Community Plan public engagement process. That option allowed for “limited development in a small portion of future residential neighbourhoods next to existing development neighbourhoods” over the next two decades.
Bitel’s biggest concern is with the Cheema lands and their proposed development.
He worries about the potential loss of popular recreation trails, which are key to Squamish’s brand and identity.
“As far as an identity goes, if we build that out, you just end up having a huge swath of the population that uses those trails every day lose faith that we are actually committed to saving green space,” he said.
Bob Cheema told The Chief that development of his family’s land would result in a net gain in trails for recreationalists, not a loss.
“The trails are going to stay. We are going to improve the trails, we are going to spend a lot of money improving the trails,” he said, adding the trails will be dedicated to the District of Squamish.
Safety for riders will also be improved with portions of the trails winding alongside housing, Cheema said.
The Cheema lands are on property that is not at a heightened risk of flooding compared with other areas of the District so preferable for increased density, Cheema said.
Smith and Bitel both said they aren’t opposed to all development, rather they are opposed to growth into certain areas they consider of higher value for environmental, recreation and community identity reasons.
Ultimately, Bitel said the decisions the District faces come down to letting capitalism dictate the future or letting the community’s vision rule the decisions.
Companies and developers will always try to make money off their land – it is up to the government to control that urge, he said.
