Comments on Gateway

You have touched in part on many of the points that resulted in the unanimous “no” vote by the Board opposing Gateway. One needs only to look at Sicamous. It was a vibrant community of permanent residents. It has now become a “tourist town” that is empty for much of the year except maybe for 2-3 months in the summer. The younger generation of the permanent families of Sicamous can no longer afford to live there because the real estate prices were driven up by a false tourist economy. Seasonal residents, be they shared interest, strata, condos, trailer parks, even fee simple seasonal do not make a community. They are not here 12 months of the year to support businesses and become volunteers for the fire depts.. and various other vol. community organizations, APC, Parks, OCP, etc.

Permanent year residents do make a permanent community.

Scotch Creek is planned to become “the town centre” for the North Shuswap and that is why the Bd. would support Osprey ( Scotch Creek) although hesitatingly with a 3-3 vote until the developer makes some adjustments which would likely result in majority Bd. support when the application comes back to the Bd..

I am concerned that the North Shuswap is turning into seasonal or temporary community. What is needed is more permanent residential development that will support all of the businesses in the NS particularly the Scotch Creek Town Ctr. year round. The South Shuswap residents have made it clear, they do not want waterfront commercial or tourist development. We want to remain a rural Shuswap permanent residential community. Sofar we have been relatively successful except for Carmel and Blind Bay Resort which had long standing commercial zoning.
My response:


I think most of the seasonal units in the North Shuswap came without the benefit of zoning, we are in fact a seasonal community anyways. The seasonality brings a economy, the other choice is to not have an economy at all. There is a balance, clearly we do not want many developments but some add an economy. In Gateways case, it is there already and not likely leaving.
Getting permanent populace, in place, needs more than the realization of that it is important. The creation of a health diverse economy would do this. Like many communities in the CSRD we do not have any promising industries. Logging, mining, industrial, fabricating and other economic drivers have not made them selves available, yet(to any amount). However we have had spin offs from the construction industry that created permanent working industries (log house building and Spooners electric- to mention a few). These would of not happened without the influx of seasonal building structures in the area. Maintaining the seasonal properties give many people work as well. I could go on, my point being there are many good results from having seasonal places and yes not too many.