Two years ago, North Cowichan adopted a new Official Community Plan that describes a sustainable long-term vision for the municipality and includes a wide range of policies to thoughtfully manage future growth and development for decades to come.
Its vision, principles and values are based on input from more than 1,200 local residents, businesses and organizations through surveys, written submissions and a two-day public hearing.
The policies in this document cover housing, environmental protection, climate change, parks, recreation, agriculture, economic development, and public infrastructure. However, the growth management policies are the most critical and key to achieving the other goals.
The Official Community Plan recognizes that the North Cowichan population will increase significantly between now and 2050 and seeks to focus the lion’s share of future development in our existing town centres and village cores, such as Chemainus, Crofton, Berkey’s Corner, the University Village area that includes the Cowichan Community Centre and VIU, plus the swath of largely undeveloped lands surrounding the new Cowichan District Hospital.
An urban containment boundary separates land serviced by municipal sewer and identified for new housing development, from rural areas where further subdivision and fragmentation is strongly discouraged. During the public engagement process to build the new Official Community Plan, more than 75 per cent of residents supported focusing growth in already developed areas and preventing urban sprawl.
Over the long term, this approach allows us to build higher density housing that is generally more affordable than lower density options, preserve rural and environmentally sensitive lands, create more walkable communities, and make better use of existing public infrastructure including for water, sewer and roads.
The alternative is urban sprawl, loss of rural character and biodiversity, worsening traffic congestion in our main transportation routes, and the expansion of costly infrastructure that our tax base cannot afford over the long term.
North Cowichan estimates we are spending more than $6 million per year on replacing our existing roads, water and sewer infrastructure, but will need to increase this amount to roughly $30 million annually. This is well beyond what we can afford as a mid-sized municipality, underscoring the importance of densifying housing around our existing infrastructure rather than expanding it across the countryside.
There is ample land available for development. The Official Community Plan designates more than 270 acres of mostly rural lands between the Cowichan Commons and the new hospital within the urban containment boundary. This area is expected to support around 6,000 housing units, developed in multiple phases. For comparison, North Cowichan currently has just under 14,000 homes.
These new developments in the Bell McKinnon area and other lands within the urban containment boundary are projected to meet North Cowichan’s housing needs for the next 50 years, featuring a mix of single-family homes, duplexes, fourplexes, townhouses, carriage houses, and mid-rise buildings with condominiums and apartments.
However, North Cowichan continues to face growing pressure to open more rural and natural lands to development, including in the Bell McKinnon area north of Herd Road, and also along Quamichan Lake and Maple Bay Road. We can expect this pressure to ramp up over the coming months.
Just as North Cowichan residents and neighbourhoods played an important role in developing the Official Community Plan, their continued support will be essential to preserving this document. It’s crucial to remain engaged, especially as some interests are advocating for changes to the urban containment boundary that could affect the progress our community has made in recent years.
Rob Douglas is Mayor of North Cowichan and sits on the Cowichan Valley Regional District Board.
