Eleven years ago, when the District of Squamish received the oceanfront lands from the provincial government, it was greeted with considerable excitement and buzz. It wasn’t universally praised but generally, the community saw this as a game-changing opportunity.
Just prior to that in 2003-04, the community embarked on a year-long program to strategize Squamish’s entire oceanfront area. Participation from the community was unprecedented and culminated in the Squamish Downtown Waterfront Charrette that focused on the Oceanfront peninsula, as the lands were acquired partway through this process.
One of the public engagement events was an educational workshop featuring Queen’s University Professor Dr. David Gordon, an international expert on waterfront redevelopment. He predicted that it would likely take us 20 years-plus and considerable money and effort to work through shifting political tides and competing interests to begin the redevelopment of these lands.
Eleven years and $11 million later, we’re not quite there yet.
For the past year, the district has been in negotiations with Matthews Southwest/Bethel (now called Newport Developments) to sell the oceanfront lands and deliver the sub area plan. Conditions of the sale encompass a number of bylaw and policy amendments including development cost charges, voluntary community amenity contributions, the revitalization tax exemption, flood construction levels, an Official Community Plan sub-area plan amendment and rezoning, to name a few.
In the coming month, council will be faced with making decisions on these bylaws, most of which come with legislated opportunities for public input and will be deliberated on in open chambers by council.
These will not be easy decisions for council; like every other step in this oceanfront journey, they are complex and layered with pros and cons and varying opinion of their merits over the long term. So we rely heavily on your input and participation.
We are also in the important process of restructuring the debt on the oceanfront lands through a legislated alternate approval process to gauge public approval. Why now, you ask? This is a prudent measure to ensure that the district is financially sound regardless of the outcome of this negotiation; by amortizing the debt over a 20-year period instead of the two balloon payments due in April 2015 and May 2016, we will ensure that our operations and borrowing capacity are in good standing regardless of what the future holds. It’s important to remember this is not new borrowing but the restructuring of existing debt.
I know it has been at times exciting and frustrating to watch this oceanfront development unfold over the past decade.
My hope is that Dr. Gordon’s prediction was only partially correct and it’ll take us half the time to get this ball rolling.
That’s really up to all of us.
