When I started working at Coast Reporter in September 2012, my first assignment was The George. It was the Saturday-morning unveiling of the proposed George Oceanfront Marine Hotel in the former Gibsons Elementary School gym, and as I wrote at the time, the crowd went wild. It was like the Second Landing.
I had just left Alberta, and one of the last big stories I’d worked on was about an oil pipeline spill in the Red Deer River near Sundre. That area, known as the West Country, was at the centre of a running battle against hydraulic fracking, with farmers and surface rights groups pitted against oil companies and provincial regulators. It was the economy versus the environment, and the environment was losing.
Compared to all that, the George project seemed about as threatening as a George Harrison record.
Lost since then in all the controversy over height and size and economics and aquifer impact was the crowd’s enthusiasm over the name of the proposed development and the historical component that was presented as a big part of it.
Pioneer Gibsons attracted Georges galore. There was town founder George Gibson, after whom the project was named, and there was also George Glassford, George Soames, George Hopkins and George Grantham. Throw in Captain George Vancouver and Chief Dan George, and you’ve got something to work with.
The hotel would be located about 30 metres from where Gibson, the town’s “first innkeeper,” landed in his sloop Swamp Angel in 1886, and would celebrate Gibsons’ history with landmarks and amenities throughout the complex, providing a “connective experience between the past and present.”
I thought then, and still think, this project could be a class act.
On Tuesday, council gave first reading to a zoning bylaw that keeps the George application alive, passing a motion that sets out a series of important conditions that have to be met before second reading.
One of these is for council to consider an official community plan (OCP) amendment that would address the project’s most contentious aspect — its failure to conform to the OCP goal of retaining the scale and character of the harbour area.
Movement on the height of the two buildings is not going to be an easy sell, as was clear Tuesday when Coun. Jeremy Valeriote could not get enough support for a relatively modest lowering of the hotel’s height.
There are still serious questions about the project’s impact on the aquifer and other issues, but the Town’s administrators and planners are doing all the right things to ensure the municipality’s interests are being protected. The height, however, is a political issue. While I would like to see The George happen, it’s ultimately going to be up to the people of Gibsons — the moderate majority — to communicate their will and pleasure to the five people they just elected or re-elected to council.
I strongly recommend that all interested parties check out the visualizations commissioned by the Town and released in March of last year. They can be found at www.gibsons.ca/the-george. Look at those images and decide for yourself if a project of this magnitude will beautify or uglify Gibsons Harbour.
