Investing with N. Cowichan a bad investment
Most people would love to invest when a municipality shows a direction it is heading in, such as the award winning Bell McKinnon Local Area Plan. This would be a safe place to invest and help grow a new community where you would consider the municipality a partner, around a new hospital, or so you would think.
It would have been good if you were on the south side of Herd Road, in the area that council didn’t cut off after West Vista Terrace put in their first application to develop. After following all the stipulations and requirements, they got left in limbo while council was deciding to remove the area from the OCP.
When a municipality puts their stamp of approval on a LAP included in the OCP, people should feel safe making an investment — it says so right on the municipality’s website. Unfortunately that is not the case here. West Vista Terrace submitted an application two years before they removed north of Herd Road from the urban containment boundary (mere metres from the hospital).
West Vista Terrace wasn’t the only one hurt by these decisions by council. Many other property owners, myself included, looked forward to being part of this plan. Now there are people sleeping in their vehicles in this area. Homes would have been built and filled by now had they entertained their initially submitted application. It’s a shame to see that after one of the first applications to develop in the area, some councillors decided it was in the community’s best interest to not have housing built. Council also said no to the developers amenity contributions and millions in future taxes collected ($65 million over the next 25 years) and instead raised our taxes.
I would like to think that investing alongside the municipality would be beneficial for everyone, but I see a housing crisis still here, and an award winning plan that gets cut down before it even had a chance to get a shovel in the ground. A true shame.
Steven Lichtenwald
North Cowichan