Editor,
The Town of Gibsons has received applications from developers to build a combined 167 apartments on properties along Gibsons Way in Lower Gibsons. These properties are adjacent to the “Stonehurst property,” which was purchased by a different developer who wants to build a hotel, bistro, and restaurant inside one of the original houses in Gibsons but keeping the exterior somewhat as it was. That developer also wants to buy a publicly owned lot next to his proposed hotel on the corner of School Road and Gibsons Way, subject to approvals for rezoning and OCP changes.
If the Town sells that developer its property, which now contains a small park and two much needed, well landscaped/treed municipal parking areas, he will build another 22 condos beside his hotel and restaurant. That’s a total of 189 new apartments/condos being proposed on those few properties in buildings up to six stories in Lower Gibsons.
The town might approve the building of apartments on the lots up Gibsons Way as they are zoned multi-residential, but it should not sell the town’s adjacent and last piece of public property in the area to another developer.
That town lot was specifically designated as needed parking and public use back in the 1980s by a forward thinking town council. Today it could be the last mature treed area along School Road and should be kept as a natural buffer between the town’s harbour character area on the west side of School Road and the proposed densely populated apartments along Gibsons Way.
I hope the new mayor and council will be as forward thinking as the ones in the past and not sell the Town’s lot on School Road.
Denis Prevost, Gibsons
