The town of Qualicum Beach has announced it will go through with a plan to purchase the Eaglecrest Golf Course land.
The town on Vancouver Island first proposed in July that it had reached a conditional agreement to purchase the nine-hole golf course for $8.5 million. After months of public consultation and due diligence, the final hurdle was cleared last week when town councillors voted to rezone the lands for potential future housing developments.
Qualicum Beach director of planning Luke Sales calls it a once-in-a-generation opportunity for the town and a creative solution to its housing crunch.
“The community needs something that the market is not providing, so what the town is doing is kind of taking the approach of stepping forward, acquiring this land, and then suddenly we have more levers in the process,” Sales said.
The purchase will see about 44.5 hectares of land brought under the jurisdiction of the municipality, with the plan to sell four hectares to developers for housing, while maintaining 20 hectares as a nine-hole golf course and developing the remainder for parklands.
The Town of Qualicum Beach is moving forward with the purchase of Eaglecrest Golf Course. (Claire Palmer/CBC)
While the purchase carries a hefty price tag, Sales explains that it would come at a minimal burden to taxpayers with the plan to fund the project through the sale of some of the land for housing redevelopment, as well as by leasing out the remaining nine holes to a golf operator.
While the purchase may have gone through, the plan has not been set in stone with public engagement on how to develop the land set to resume in the new year.
A public engagement session in September saw over 400 people come out to have their voices heard — and reviews were mixed.
A survey on the proposal saw 66 per cent of 891 respondents say they are excited about the idea, 22 per cent say they are concerned, and the remainder say they are unsure.
Linda LaPierre has lived in the Eaglecrest neighbourhood for 10 years, where she enjoys walking her dog. While she says she’s happy to see more parklands and the restoration of the golf course, her concerns lie with the density the housing may bring, and the lack of infrastructure to accommodate it.
”It’s going to change our community forever,” she said.
“I’m happy we’re keeping the golf course, but I have a lot of concerns about the high density, parking issues, traffic issues, and kind of overcrowding everybody into one segment of this area. You know, if it was spread out a little more even, maybe I wouldn’t be as concerned.”
Bill Curry, another Eaglecrest neighbourhood resident, called it a win-win at the open house back in September.
“I think the devil is in the detail,” he said.
“However, there’s a lot of concern at the pace [of] changes, and there’s a lot of layers to this.”
Sales says he thinks the project could be an example of how municipalities can get creative to address the housing needs of its residents, as many communities grapple with a housing crisis.
“The most creative solutions, I think, in the future are going to be where organizations, governments or private organizations really stretch the boundaries of what they traditionally do and start to look at things from a different perspective,” he said.
“It’s a challenge to local governments to rethink the way they do things.”
Sales says there will be more public consultation in the new year, as the town looks for input on the redevelopment now that the land purchase has been finalized.
