Gowland Harbour Views proposal 'dead' - for now anyway
Cortes Currents
English - June 22, 2022 12:26 - 4 minutes - 11.2 MBNews cortes island discovery islands quadra food security energy indigenous nations Homepage Download Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts Overcast Castro Pocket Casts RSS feed
Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - The fate of a proposal to develop 51 residential lots, a campground, marina and two waterfront parks on Quadra Island may finally have been decided.
The public meeting for Rick Schellinck ’s proposed Gowland Harbour Views development was originally scheduled for July 28, 2011 and, after eleven years of delays, finally occured on April 20, 2022.
The controversial project may have finally been voted down at the SRD Board’s June 15 meeting.
As Gowland Harbour is on Quadra Island, the decision was left to the SRD’s four Regional Directors. They voted against it.
Regional Director Jim Abram explained that 8 of the 546 submissions for this project were in favour of it, all the others said no.
“We’ve never got numbers like that!’ he explained. “The people of Quadra island have spoken clearly that they do not want this proposal to proceed.”
Cortes Island Director, Noba Anderson said, “I concur that Quadra spoke very clearly on this one.”
Regional Direcror Brenda Leigh added, “It was there reasons for objecting that I really took to heart. Quadra just can't handle the amount of pressure that this development would pose for them in numerous areas, such as infrastructure, ferries … and traffic. They're all concerned about things that would really impact them on Quadra. I really took it to heart and I'm ready to vote on this.”
After that, the discussion turned to how could this proposal be brought to an end in a manner that made it impossible for the developer to resurrect it.
Chief Administrative Officer David Leitch said once the third motion for a project is defeated, it is dead.
Leigh pointed out that at the previous board meeting, a defeated motion was reconsidered and passed.
Leitch explained, “ That was a decision of the directors. You can reconsider anything. So if you defeat it and make a rescinding motion, you can rescind that. I would suggest putting the motion on the floor and voting as you will.”
All four Regional Directors then voted against the proposal, which is effectively dead - in its present form anyway.