Golf course, college and housing proposed for the 113-hectare site; project could collide with the official plan
Michael McCullough
Sun
A little-known group of offshore investors has acquired the last large chunk of undeveloped private land in Whistler, with ambitious hopes of building an international college, multi-family housing and a golf course.
But the project appears to be on a collision course with Whistler’s official community plan, and could become a test of the resort’s commitment to controlling growth.
In a deal that closed this month, Chateau Nova Whistler Development Ltd. bought 113 hectares at the northwest end of Green Lake, on the resort municipality’s northern boundary about a 10-minute drive from Whistler Village. The site of an old sawmill, the forested property was held for a number of years by B.C.-based owners and was on the market for about a year at a list price of $12.9 million, said listing agent and former mayor Drew Meredith of Whistler Real Estate Ltd.
The sale price was not disclosed, but Meredith said it was less than the asking price.
Chateau Nova’s president and lead investor is Parvin Saadati, an Iranian-born resident of Dubai who also owns a condominium at the University of B.C.
According to Vancouver immigration consultant Reza Farkoush, who represents the new owners, Saadati has lined up investors from Dubai, India and China to participate in the project.
Farkoush said Chateau Nova would most likely work in conjunction with one or more Canadian developers to build and market the project, ideally before 2010. The components would include low-rise condominiums or townhouses, a private international college and possibly a golf course, which would take up close to half the property. Whether or not the golf course was included, the new community would feature ample green space, he said.
The group has scheduled a presentation for prospective buyers, development partners and investors in The Lakelands at Green Lake, as the project is called, at the Chateau Whistler on May 5.
But the project faces obstacles, most notably the cap on the number of beds in Whistler contained within the official community plan. Whistler is currently just 6,200 beds short of its 55,087-bed limit, and virtually all that new housing is spoken for.
“In most cases it’s already zoned,” said Bob MacPherson, the municipality’s general manager of planning and development.
Originally designed to keep Whistler to a size where it would not require an expensive sewage treatment facility to comply with provincial environmental laws, the bed cap today is more about the community’s perceived carrying capacity, MacPherson said.
“At what point does the resort experience disappear?” MacPherson asked rhetorically.
Since the cap was established in 1993, only one exception was made to a developer’s bed unit quota. In 1999 ski hill owner Intrawest Corp. was given 476 beds over the cap in a three-party deal that allowed a swath of formerly developable wetland to be preserved for conservation purposes. The deal enabled the construction of a Four Seasons resort hotel.
MacPherson said he had no knowledge of the Lakelands proposal, but by its very location it would also conflict with “Whistler 2020,” the community’s comprehensive sustainability plan adopted last year. That document confines future development to the corridor along Highway 99 between Function Junction in the south and Emerald Estates in the north. (The latter is at the south end of Green Lake.)
“Right now we have very limited zoning,” Farkoush said, essentially for single-family houses on large lots.
“There will be challenges,” he conceded. “We want to focus on the solutions.”
Whistler’s real estate market has been a queer anomaly in B.C. for the past 18 months. After a frenzy of speculative buying and unheard-of prices in the lead up to the awarding of the 2010 Olympics to Vancouver and Whistler in mid-2003, sales activity foundered and prices dropped off.
In January the B.C. Assessment Authority reported that Whistler was the only major community in the province where average home values declined. A two-bedroom apartment in Whistler village slipped in assessed value to $660,000 from $666,000 between July 2003 and July 2004, the provincial government agency said. The assessment on a single-family home in the Alpine Meadows neighbourhood similarly dropped, to an average $1.023 million from $1.056 million a year earlier.
Meredith believes it was a simple correction in a market that had become over-valued, rather than any fallout from the 2010 decision or the arrival at the building cap.
“In 2003 we had just a wild market,” he said. “We saw 30-per-cent growth in the real estate market in one year. Now we’re paying for that.”
Sales seem to be picking up this spring, Meredith said. It might have happened earlier if not for the disappointing ski season.
“Everybody still wants Whistler,” he observed. “There’s still development going on even though we’re at or near the cap.”
Developers such as the proponents of the Nita Lake Lodge — twice blocked by neighbours‘ objections and revived — are finding ways to build their projects through trades of amenities for zoning, for example.
Meredith, who met with Saadati in the course of the transaction, described her as a “worldly entrepreneur” looking for a glamourous investment play. In land title documents her occupation is listed as a dentist.
THE LIMITS OF GROWTH
Whistler caps its number of bed units to preserve its character.
Bed cap: 55,087
Existing bed units: 48,800
To be developed: 6,200
Employee housing allowed in excess of cap: 6,650
Source: Resort Municipality of Whistler
© The Vancouver Sun 2005
