Candy Ho, chief executive officer of The Cape on Bowen Community Development Ltd. at Cape Roger Curtis, Bowen Island, B.C.The Cape on Bowen Community Development Ltd.
The new 242-acre park proposed for Bowen Island may include some of the most treasured coastline in B.C., but it is also the culmination of two decades of controversy involving a battle over new density and the threat to sensitive forest and coastal bluff.
“It got really ugly,” says islander Marian Bantjes, who’s lived on Bowen for 22 years. The island, part of Metro Vancouver, is a 20-minute ferry ride from West Vancouver, about the size of Manhattan Island but with a population of 4,256 and has a mayor and municipal council.
The fate of the park could be decided any day now, and for island residents, it will come down to a question of single-family houses versus a park with campsites.
It all started in 2004 when a family sold off 618 acres of stunning forest it had owned for decades, along the island’s southwest coastline, previously called Cape Roger Curtis, now known as The Cape. Don Ho, a Vancouver-based developer, along with fellow developer Edwin Lee, purchased the property for $16-million.
For decades, residents had treated the land as a highly prized, publicly accessible quasi-conservation area. Plans to develop the land, adding significant density – much more than the 224 allowed under the Official Community Plan – along with park and coastline protection, drew an angry response from residents.
Bowen Island is largely a bedroom community, accessible by a small ferry. It is sorely lacking in infrastructure and residents fear development will overtax those assets.
A scaled down development plan was also rejected and the developers moved to convert the property into 59 partially cleared 10-acre lots, with driveways, water wells and electrical. Some areas were logged and large docks were built for a few of the priciest waterfront estates.
“I used to go in there before it happened, and it was a thick dense forest with areas that were prehistoric with six-foot-high ferns, like a jungle,” says Marian Bantjes, who’s lived on Bowen for 22 years. “I live on the route. Eight logging trucks would go by in the morning and afternoon. It was horrible.”
In 2014, Mr. Ho said he planned to sell off the remaining lots. “In any case, this property is now being showcased to a global market,” he told the local news outlet, the Bowen Island Undercurrent. However, a buyer wasn’t found and Mr. Ho’s daughter, Candy Ho, helped the owners sell two dozen lots over the years. A few big houses sprang up, with the owners putting strict environmental covenants in place. Ms. Ho says she turned down one buyer who wanted to install a pool. Many lots remained empty. Today one of the houses is on the market for $18.6-million.
In 2019, Ms. Ho was made the chief executive officer of the Cape on Bowen Community Development Ltd., the investor group spearheading the development plan. Ms. Ho was tasked with not only finding new investors to purchase the remaining acreage, but to “heal the wounds” on both sides.
Two years ago, she tried for another rezoning of the 32 remaining lots. She worked to regain the community’s trust, engaging with the residents and sharing her plan to create a new subdivision for close to 400 units, including assisted living and rental units. There’d be a regenerative farm and eco-spiritual leadership retreat. However, it would require considerable disruption of the land and more burden on the infrastructure. It didn’t go over well.
In 2020 an anonymous buyer offered to buy three of the development group’s best waterfront lots and donate the 32 acres to the community as park land, to be run by a conservancy. After some negotiation, Ms. Ho sold the lots for a reported $8.8-million.
Ms. Ho took this as a sign that conservation, not necessarily development, was the right path forward. It became economically viable, and it also fit with her growing appreciation for the land. She asked shareholders within the development group to hold off on selling the remaining coastline lots to give her time to find another conservancy-minded group who might buy the land at a price close to market value and protect it.
Candy Ho, CEO of The Cape on Bowen Community Development Ltd., on Bowen Island, off the coast from Vancouver.The Cape on Bowen Community Development Ltd.
Ms. Ho set out to find such a buyer.
“The conservancy set a new precedent at market value … that made it possible. This is not pie in the sky anymore,” she remembers thinking.
Ms. Ho said that the intention had always been to preserve the area as a park. As to why the land set aside for park was subdivided into single-family lots, Ms. Ho says shareholders wanted to protect themselves from any unexpected down zoning.
She already sensed that she should cancel the rezoning application. A survey that showed only 39 per cent of residents were in favour of her master plan confirmed her decision.
“In the past I didn’t have the ability to listen or feel the land, but I spent so much time there, it was actually the land that guided me to close the master plan rezoning,” Ms. Ho said.
Last year, an agreement was reached with Metro Vancouver to purchase 24 lots for about $40-million. However, the proposal still has to go through the island’s rezoning process, and residents have mounted a petition against a proposed campsite because the ferry service is already stretched. Others are thrilled with the idea of it being protected in perpetuity as park.
Metro’s annual parks budget is $27-million, so it isn’t a decision that’s being made lightly, says Michael Wiebe, Metro’s former vice-chair on the regional parks committee, who championed the park proposal. He’s sympathetic with island residents because of a constrained timeline, but he says it’s a huge opportunity to recover land and rewild it.
“Fifty years from now, you won’t be able to buy properties of this size. You don’t get a lot of opportunities like this, to take developable land, these 10-acre parcels, and put them in public lands.”
For islanders, after years of vitriol, the future of the Cape comes down to a question of campsites versus single-family homes. Ms. Bantjes says she is not a fan of allowing the construction of more houses for the rich, but she believes they’d be less impactful to the island than a busy campsite.
“It’s a weird situation for myself to be against a park, but it comes at the cost of our community. If they could get people in there without coming through the ferry system, I’d be all for it.”
Resident David Hocking says the land is a valuable public resource for the Lower Mainland. Mr. Hocking was a Bowen Island councillor and Metro Vancouver director until last fall.
“For the most part it’s still in wonderful condition. … There are about 15 plants that are endangered or rare. So there is a lot that is worth protecting. It’s not as if it’s in pristine condition, but it’s in pretty great shape,” he says. “There is a lot of ecological value there, and 700 metres of waterfront. It’s a coastal dry bluff ecosystem that is rare in B.C.”
The alternative to the park, he says, is more big houses. He points out that if the remaining lots get built out as homes, the ferries will be used to transport construction materials for several years. A big house can take two or three years to build.
“We need affordable housing, and we certainly don’t get that with really giant homes on 10-acre lots. … I’d rather see that land as park, as much as possible.”