by Eric Sherlock - March 7, 2008 — Bowen Island Undercurrent

Nowhere is there a greater need for a broad new community consensus than with the twin challenges facing Snug Cove village and Cape Roger Curtis.

Just over 10 years ago, I was elected as a trustee on Bowen Island as part of local government under the Islands Trust. We received a clear mandate from voters to implement the Island’s newly created Official Community Plan (OCP) and during that term, I was also part of overseeing Bowen’s transition to becoming the province’s only municipality within the Islands Trust.

The Island’s OCP has been modified since that time, most recently in 2005, to lay out a new Snug Cove Village Plan (SCVP). That new vision for Snug Cove resolved a desire to densify the Cove, while at the same time to retain the planned island-wide limit on number of dwelling units that is prescribed in the larger OCP. A density transfer mechanism that rewards developers who shift building rights from the rest of the island into the Cove was central to that resolution. The SCVP envisions townhouses and row housing, including extensive non-market housing, all with ground-level entry.

But the current municipal council seems to be preparing to rip up that plan, and to replace it with some version of their own, favoured Snug Cove Master Plan (SCMP), prepared by a consultant. This new proposal has some valuable aspects, but the plan’s call to construct four-storey apartment blocks, no doubt requiring elevators and special aerial-lift fire fighting equipment, directly attacks a long-held consensus about community character that has guided Bowen’s development for over a generation. Most seriously, the new proposal ignores the island-wide limit on housing density that is fundamental to the vision of the OCP.

Council is heading for a crisis because under Bowen’s Letters Patent, as an island municipality any rezoning that exceeds the OCP residential density limit requires approval of the Island’s Trust executive committee. And why should the Islands Trust approve a radical deviation in scale and character from the Snug Cove Village Plan that Bowen’s own municipal council formulated as policy less than three years ago?

This conflict over Snug Cove is directly related to the challenge at Cape Roger Curtis. There, council has lost the initiative it once had. Density transfer from the Cape into the Cove, no doubt, is key to some sort of solution. But the proposed SCMP does not contain this provision. And by favoring densities in Snug Cove that exceed the OCP, council’s authority to demand that the Cape Roger Curtis developers themselves adhere to the OCP density is critically compromised.

The fact is the current council has surrounded itself with building industry professionals who, not surprisingly, are advocating big city solutions and urban projects for Bowen Island. Many of these ideas are disconnected from the smaller scale and environmentally focused policies that have been inspired by the Islands Trust and are reflected in the existing OCP.

Originally, there was hope that an island municipality would combine greater local autonomy with a ‘slow island, small footprint’ approach to development. And although that hope has never been fulfilled, it still can be.

At this crucial time, council should issue a moratorium on development, as was done in the early 1990s by the Island trustees Graeme Dinsdale and Claus Spikermann, and engage the community in creating a comprehensive renewed vision for this beautiful place.