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[G-Man]

Metchosin is not the first place that comes to mind when you think of large projects but...

Metchosin's choice: Park or housing
Centre Mountain developers offer residents three concepts for 121-hectare property
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Font: * * * * Bill Cleverley, Times Colonist
Published: Tuesday, October 24, 2006
The controversial Centre Mountain development in Metchosin could give residents a difficult choice between parkland and affordable housing.

Consultants met once again with Metchosin residents yesterday as part of a continuing process to redesign the 121-hectare Centre Mountain development proposal in the municipality's northwest corner, off Sooke Road opposite Humpback Road.

The consultants presented three concepts during two workshop sessions.

One, allowed under the existing zoning, would see 37 lots of between five and 10 acres developed with standard road allowances and overhead wiring. Each would be served with wells and septic fields.

The second, under the municipality's enhanced residential zoning, was very similar. It would allow one more lot for a total of 38, but see 25 per cent of the site preserved as park. Canadian Horizons development manager Marianne Wade noted that under the first two zonings, secondary suites are allowed, effectively doubling the number of families permitted to 74 or 76.

The third concept involved a new comprehensive zone proposed by the developers which would see 76 two-acre residential lots developed. The smaller lots, which would have a covenant prohibiting secondary suites, would mean 50 per cent of the entire site would be dedicated as park -- effectively preserving all of Centre Mountain for public access. The clustered development would also mean it could be serviced by a common septic system and by CRD water.

The developer also proposed narrower hillside roads to best manage storm water and reduce environmental impact.

"What we're saying is if you allow us to enhance, following your basic amenity zoning guidelines which is two-acre lots -- they don't go below that -- we can look at giving you 45-per-cent park dedication; an extra five per cent plus in building covenants on lots. We can look at going to Habitat Acquisition Trust to see if it interests them to put it into conservation," Wade said.

"We heard the community. They want to be rural. They don't want anything less than two acres. But the difference is, we can actually take parkland and dedicate it."

But the idea of no secondary suites didn't get a particularly smooth ride at the afternoon open house.

Resident Larry Tremblay said Metchosin has been a leader in providing affordable housing through allowing secondary suites.

"I wear flak from every municipality and friend in town who say 'What do you do to the greater CRD area? You guys are in your little world out there and you give nothing. I say, 'Well, we've got affordable housing. Have you?' "

The meetings were the third in a series of workshops since June when the developers told council they were going back to the drawing board and withdrawing plans for a controversial golf course/resort on the site.

Narrowly approved by a previous council, that development called for an 18-hole Robert Trent Jones golf course, three resort lodges and cabins with a total of 265 units.

But it never had the support of all local residents and even sparked a lawsuit from Metchosin resident and former CRD director Shirley Wilde, who tried to have the zoning bylaw approving it quashed.

Consultants will consider yesterday's input and return for another workshop in about a month.

© Times Colonist (Victoria) 2006

[Lover Fighter]

I read that in the paper today and honestly, I think I would prefer a park for that location. I was hiking that hill last year and was thinking they should develop it into a park, surprised it's actually being considered now.

[Rorschach]

They have a website with news and reports too...

[url=http://www.centremountain.com:6684b]Centre Mountain Development[/url:6684b]

There was also an article in the TC a few days ago about how Metchosin is as close as you can get to no government at all. It was very interesting how the city has reorganized to minimize bureaucracy and has only minimal staff with a few part-timers and contracted experts providing service as needed. The article was mainly about not even needing a full-time planner there.

[larrobb]

no kidding, Metchosin is as close to "no government" as you can get. that's why NOTHING EVER MOVES FORWARD. don't be naive, the bureacracy is in full swing, and the current situation is due to incompetenace, not planning. the TC article made it sound like a well-tuned operation.....don't believe it. go for a drive out there sometime, but be sure to set your watch back 30 years so you can appreciate the attitude.

[Holden West]

Residents savour rural life
But in small, idyllic Metchosin, development pressure is felt on all sides

TARA CARMAN
The Globe and Mail
POSTED ON 08/11/06

METCHOSIN, B.C. -- It's a community known as much for what it doesn't have as what it does.

It has no streetlights, sidewalks, sewers, strip malls, condos and hardly any crime.

It does have some of the cleanest air and water in Canada, spectacular empty beaches, rugged forests and hundreds of kilometres of wilderness trails. It is also within half an hour of all the amenities of a major Canadian city.

Residents of Metchosin, a community of just over 5,000 located 20 kilometres west of Victoria, consider themselves living the Canadian dream. But they worry about whether they can continue to hold out against encroaching suburbs.

One of two roads into Metchosin is lined with car dealerships, fast-food outlets and the Great Canadian Casino. The neighbouring municipality of Langford is home to numerous big-box stores. Major townhouse developments are going in right on the municipal line. Even the once-isolated fishing town of Sooke, on Metchosin's western border, is building up its housing and infrastructure.

Metchosin is feeling the development pressure from all sides, and yet its residents remain militantly committed to the idea that their community is unique in North America. No one is more convinced of this than Mayor John Ranns.

"We are the only completely rural municipality that I know of in British Columbia. We have no urbanization. And I believe strongly that that is why we can survive in the long-term future," he said.

Rural communities are more resilient than their urban counterparts, Mr. Ranns said. In the event of a natural disaster, such as an earthquake, the people of Metchosin would be able to feed themselves, he said.

And he added that because Metchosin does not have expensive infrastructure like sewers to maintain, the municipality is debt-free and therefore better able to withstand an economic downturn than its more urbanized neighbours.

Metchosin has a rural heritage that dates back to the 1850s. The names of the pioneer farming families are commemorated in the roads and landmarks of the community.

Vancouver Island's first governor, Sir James Douglas, exalted its "indescribable beauty" in a letter to his daughter and built a hunting lodge there. It was incorporated as a municipality in 1984, largely as a defence against being turned into a dumping ground for the Capital Regional District.

The community plan established a variety of 21/2- , five- and 10-acre lots. Subdivision was prohibited, and subsequent councils have made it stick. For this reason, Metchosin looks much the same as it did two decades ago while development has taken off in the surrounding communities.

Mr. Ranns decided to run for a fourth term as mayor after a six-year hiatus from Metchosin politics because he was concerned that the rural identity of the community was being squandered. In November, 2005, he defeated incumbent Karen Watson, who ran on a platform of measured residential and commercial growth, by a rate of 2 to 1.

Mr. Ranns's victory was interpreted within and outside of the community as a strong rural mandate. Soon after the election, Mr. Ranns received petitions from other rural-minded communities in the area -- East Sooke, Shirley, Otter Point and the Malahat -- requesting integration with Metchosin. Mr. Ranns says he would rather keep the regions autonomous, but supports working with other communities to establish a rural land use area in Victoria's Western Communities.

"If Metchosin is really what we say we are, that is, a community that is determined to remain rural despite all of the urban advances around us and one that believes that that is an essential and valuable pursuit for the long-term planning of the region, then philosophically we have to stand up for the other people that are in the region that feel the same way but don't have any municipal strength to do so," he said.

"Whether we like it or not, it seems that it's almost up to us now."

The provincial Ministry of Community Services would not consider any rural association outside the municipal model, but offered Metchosin $30,000 to study the economic implications of incorporating neighbouring East Sooke.

Mr. Ranns has not given up on the idea of a rural alliance, but plans are on hold for the moment.

Councillor John Webb said his political allegiance is to Metchosin and he is not interested in representing other communities. He said the main threat to Metchosin's way of life is not the townhouse developments on its boundary, but the rampant real-estate prices that could turn Metchosin into a community of estates.

"There's still blue-collar people in the community that make their living in the area," he said, adding that some of his neighbours own backhoes, while others are cabinet makers or sheep farmers.

Derek Wulff, who heads the Association for the Preservation of a Rural Metchosin, is one such person. Mr. Wulff is an inventor of children's scientific toys that he creates in his basement and ships to destinations all over the world, including the Smithsonian Museum. He and his family have a large organic vegetable garden, several beehives and horses. A Smart Car and a pickup truck are parked in the driveway.

Mr. Wulff has lived many places, including downtown Toronto, and says that living in Metchosin is in some ways inconvenient.

"The cost is we don't have the amenities. We can't get everything instantly. The benefit is we can see constellations, it's quiet. I can hear barn owls at night."

[Mike K.]

Metchosin is feeling the development pressure from all sides, and yet its residents remain militantly committed to the idea that their community is unique in North America. No one is more convinced of this than Mayor John Ranns.

"We are the only completely rural municipality that I know of in British Columbia. We have no urbanization. And I believe strongly that that is why we can survive in the long-term future," he said.

...yes, you are indeed rural but at the expense of municipalities that have urbanized in order to employ many of your residents, supply them with commercial amenities and provide them with infrastructure.

I have no problem with Metchosin considering itself rural, but it shouldn't hack at the rest of the region for tramping on its 5-acre-pet-lot hobby farm fun. The mayor of Metchosin seems to forget that his feifdom is not self-contained and without other municipalities "encroaching on Metchosin's borders" Metchosin would actually require the commercialized zones, employment zones and infrastructure is considers itself so proudly void of.

I'm also glad the article touched on the rising values of the lots in Metchosin, as the lack of avialable housing is indeed creating the "estates" the article eludes to.