After a public hearing about the proposed subdivision of District Lot 1312 in Roberts Creek was met with mostly opposition from attending community members, the applicant has rescinded the proposal and plans to put forward a revised version in the near future.
The Sunshine Coast Regional District (SCRD) board was scheduled to pass a recommendation to host another public hearing for the application at the Nov. 4 board meeting, when general manager of planning and development Ian Hall told the directors that the applicant had decided to withdraw the application.
“We’re just not getting our message across,” Jim Green, an agent who works on behalf of the land owner, told Coast Reporter on Nov. 8. “So, we think we need to go back and re-collaborate with the SCRD planning staff, take some of the feedback that we’ve got from that public hearing, look at the correspondence that’s been sent in from the community members, and then try and come up with a better plan.”
SCRD staff were first informed about the applicant’s decision on Nov. 1, Hall told Coast Reporter, before another public hearing was scheduled. The Sept. 7 hearing for the proposal was ultimately considered invalid under the Local Government Act because a second public notice of the meeting did not appear in the Coast Reporter, due to newspaper staff oversight.
At the Nov. 4 board meeting, the SCRD board provided their support to rescind previous recommendations related to the application, and voted to abandon the amendments to the Roberts Creek Official Community Plan and a zoning bylaw amendment.
The rescinded proposal sought to rezone a 40.45-hectare parcel to allow a subdivision on the southern 14.32 hectares and a donation of the northern 26.13 hectares to the SCRD as a community amenity contribution. It also involved extending Porter Road beyond Sullivan Road to bisect the parcel into a subdivision of 12 rural residential lots, each approximately one hectare in size.
Green said the zoning of the land is often misunderstood, and that he heard “inaccurate perceptions” during the hearing in September.
“I listen to people talk about the importance of turning down the rezoning so that they can save the forest and it’s like, wow, I’m not getting my message across. This current zone is for forestry practices and ... basically means you log the property, and that’s the intention of the zone,” he said.
The guidelines around preserving riparian zones are different when it comes to logging versus a subdivision or the contribution of a community amenity, Green said. Whereas covenants would come into effect for the existing waterways if the subdivision goes ahead, those protections would not be required to the same extent if the area was logged, he said.
“It’s a weaker kind of management that will be put in place,” Cam Forrester, the forester who authored a report on the land’s natural history and environmental features for the application, told Coast Reporter.
Some residents at the hearing pointed out the proposed community amenity contribution includes a powerline right of way and telecommunications tower, but Forrester said that does not mean the area is a “dead zone.” His report shows signs of biodiversity throughout the amenity area, parts of which include an unofficial trail system used by members of the public.
The applicant wants “to continue the collaboration with the SCRD and to ensure that we’ve got the best possible application clearly communicated to the community,” Green said.
