Back in 1971, Jim Youngren earned a place in pop-culture lore by erecting a billboard reading "Will the last person leaving Seattle turn out the lights."
It was, according to the Seattle Times, the first use of the line, which has since been applied to Saskatchewan, New Jersey, Wall Street and a bazillion other beleaguered locales.
The question now is whether it's lights out for the Vancouver Island mega-project Youngren has been trying to get off the ground for a decade. His development company says its massive undertaking at Union Bay is now in doubt.
Washington state's Youngren is the silent owner behind Kensington Island Properties, whose efforts to build in tiny Union Bay took a hit this week when sa国际传媒 Supreme Court Justice Dean Wilson threw out the bylaws allowing the development to proceed.
At issue is a planned 342-hectare project comprising 2,300 homes, a marina, a seniors centre, two 18-hole golf courses, vacation villas, hotels and commercial space. It would wrap around the existing community of Union Bay, which clings to the shore of Baynes Sound, 15 kilometres south of Courtenay.
When fully built over 15 years or so, Kensington would add up to 4,500 people to the few hundred who now live in Union Bay. That prospect has split opinion, some saying it would mean the end to a bucolic way of life, others that it would revive a moribund community. Kensington vice-president Brian McMahon claims the support of a majority of residents.
Not on side is a group called the Baynes Sound Area Society for Sustainability, which sued the regional district over those bylaws. In 2006, after a public hearing, the district told Kensington it could proceed as long as it fulfilled 22 specific conditions, one of which was that the developer arrange to get water from the village of Cumberland, which draws on the Van Lakes. But later on, prompted by an engineers' report, Kensington's water source was changed to Langley Lake.
Revised bylaws were drawn up to reflect the change, but this time no public hearing was held. The project's opponents, to whom the quality and quantity of Union Bay water are a big deal, argued the public should have had the opportunity to speak. This week, the court agreed. It also said the K'omoks First Nation wasn't adequately consulted.
That result prompted Kensington Island to issue a statement that, perhaps tellingly, spoke in the past tense: "The Union Bay project would have been outstanding. It would have spurred on the local economy and generated much-needed jobs at a time when the rest of the economy struggles. ... The court's decision is deeply disappointing and casts doubt on the future of the Union Bay project."
"We've been 10 years in this process," said McMahon, his frustration dripping down the phone line from the Comox Valley. All there is to show for the effort is a half-built golf course that had been scheduled to open in 2011. McMahon says the big losers are the people of Union Bay, who would have seen new water and sewage systems replace septic fields that leach into Baynes Sound.
But Kensington's adversaries also had water at the heart of their argument: "We felt that the lack of an assured water source, at the time the largest development on Vancouver Island was given the green light to be built by the Comox Valley Regional District, ran counter to the democratic and legal process and virtually put an entire community's drinking water at risk," said Karen Hurley, speaking for the Baynes Sound Area Society.
Still, this fight goes beyond water and consultation. There's a culture clash at work, those with enviro-lefty-rural sensibilities on one side, right-leaning development boosters on the other. Kensington has become emblematic of the change on the mid-Island over the past decade, well-heeled retirees in golf shoes walking on fairways where gumboots once trod through forest and farm. Note that McMahon ran for the Liberals in 1996, and his wife, Wendy McMahon, was the Liberal MLA for Columbia River-Revelstoke before being defeated in the last election. There's a philosophical divide.
What happens next is uncertain. The regional district is weighing its options, which include appealing the court decision or relaunching the bylaw process. But Kensington's statement hints that the company might have had enough. "The outlook for future growth in this area seems grim after the experience Kensington Island Properties has had," McMahon says.
For Youngren, whose 1971 billboard was actually an inducement for outsiders to invest in Seattle, it might finally be lights out at Union Bay.
