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Developer presents two options to acquire bed units

Haibeck proposes to transfer units from Zen lands or entice council with community benefits Vancouver developer John Haibeck wants to "let the community decide" the fate of his multi-million project on Nita Lake.

Haibeck proposes to transfer units from Zen lands or entice council with community benefits

Vancouver developer John Haibeck wants to "let the community decide" the fate of his multi-million project on Nita Lake.

"I feel it’s important that the story be told on this project," said Haibeck at the Association of Whistler Area Residents for the Environment’s monthly meeting Sept. 5, where he publicly unveiled the two options for his development proposal.

What he proposes for Whistler is a brand new train station to replace the old one at the end of Lake Placid Road, along with a luxury 80-room hotel.

And in the 23 nearby acres of land that he bought from John Taylor he will put up 11 estate homes and an employee housing complex with 30 units.

The one major glitch in Haibeck’s plans is bed units; he doesn’t have enough to build what he is proposing.

He has two options: to buy land with existing bed units, transfer the bed units to his Creekside property, and in return donate the purchased land to the municipality to be preserved in trust; or to ask council to create more bed units for his project in return for community cash benefits.

Now he is looking to the public for some input on the options.

At the AWARE meeting Haibeck explained how the options came about over the course of two years.

When he first started thinking about revamping the train station and developing John Taylor’s lands, the only existing bed units he could find were ones owned by John Zen.

Zen has 242 units sitting on Lot 3, a portion of his 127 acres located just north of Function Junction. Years ago Zen’s property was zoned for a trailer park.

Lot 3 is the contentious wetland portion of his lands – the portion that the municipality has looked at preserving in the past.

Buying Lot 3 would cost Haibeck $5.2 million.

Last year however, council gave first and second reading to a rezoning bylaw which would "downzone" the Lot 3 wetlands.

The downzoning would eliminate virtually all permitted uses on the land, with the exception of a public nature conservation park, a private nature conservation park, unsheltered ecotourism-based use, or an unsheltered school for teaching ecotourism and other nature-based programs.

Although Zen would still own the land, the downzoning would take away his right to develop his bed units on it.

It would also hijack a potential sale to Haibeck.

It’s been more than a year since the downzoning was first proposed but the bylaw has yet to be adopted by council.

In a poll conducted for Haibeck’s Nita Lake Lodge Corporation in May, results showed the community favoured the preservation of the wetlands by ownership, not by downzoning.

Haibeck said downzoning would not protect the wetlands forever, as future councils may be able to rezone the land for something else.

"It doesn’t guarantee anything in perpetuity," said Haibeck.

Councillor Ken Melamed, who was at the AWARE meeting, said he was personally concerned about any deal which only included a portion of the Zen lands.

Zen still has bed units on other pieces of his property in that area, which means there is potential to develop them.

"Any deal with the Zen lands has to include the whole property," he said.

So because of the contentious issue of the TV1 wetlands, Haibeck came up with another plan.

Although he can’t find any more existing bed units for sale, he still has one more option if past municipal practices are anything to go by.

The municipality has the ability to create more bed units, despite the fact they would be above and beyond Whistler’s self-imposed cap, if the project merits sufficient community benefit.

It states in the Official Community Plan that if the development:

a) provides clear and substantial benefits to the community and the resort;

b) is supported by the community, in the opinion of council;

c) will not cause unacceptable impacts on the community, resort, or environment and;

d) meets all applicable criteria set out in the OCP, then the municipality can increase its bed unit capacity.

Case in point is the Emerald Forest.

In 1999 Intrawest bought 139 acres of environmentally sensitive land in the Emerald Forest for an undisclosed amount from the Decigon Group.

That property was then transferred to the municipality to be preserved in trust. In exchange Intrawest received $1 million and 476 new bed units, even though those new bed units went beyond the cap.

The 476 bed units were added to the 36 bed units that were already allocated to the Emerald Forest land and then transferred to Lot 5 for the development of the Four Seasons hotel.

In this case, the community benefits of preserving the Emerald Forest were enough to persuade council to exceed the bed unit cap.

Like past developers Haibeck looked at what he could do for the community in order to receive bed units.

He proposes a $4.5 million donation to the Whistler Museum and Library Capital Campaign, which would ensure that the project would get built.

In addition he proposes a $2 million donation to Millennium Place to pay off the building debt – a debt that the municipality has guaranteed.

Haibeck’s first option would preserve a wetland area at the cost of $5.2 million. The second option would cost him up to $6.5 million in donations.

"This project is good for the community at large," he told AWARE members.

The two options are going before council at its Sept. 16 regular meeting.

Haibeck said he has plenty of support from the community. Now he just has to convince council that there are merits and community benefits in his development with either scenario.

With either option he said there is about $14 million in total community benefits.

A revamped $7.5 million train station will boost the tourism industry in Whistler, he said. He has already promised more than $1 million to the Whistler Health Care Centre.

Even as BC Rail pulls out of the declining passenger rail business, Haibeck maintains that rail can work here.

"BC Rail has pulled the wool over people’s eyes," he said.

Currently he is in discussions with Rocky Mountaineer Railtours, a private luxury rail company which could tap into the cruise ship market in Vancouver, bringing upscale tourists to Whistler throughout the summer.

A rail consultant, hired by the Nita Lake Lodge Corporation, produced a report, which indicated a tourist train could bring 35,000 to 100,000 people from the cruise ship market annually.

Haibeck is also looking into the possibility of a commuter train for locals living in Squamish and Pemberton who work in Whistler.

"We’re not going to be in the business of operating it," he said.

Boosting the railway will also take more cars off the highway, he added.

An added benefit he says is getting rid of the old train station.

"There’s the Whistler Creek residents who are tired at looking at an eyesore," he said.

Instead of the $1 million-plus for the health care sitting in a bank, Haibeck will build a 3,000 square foot addition to the existing health care centre with a fully equipped operating room, recovery rooms and a sterilization room, and all the equipment that goes with it.

The money is going to the Whistler Health Care Centre because the original Nita Lake Lodge development proposal included a state of the art private surgical centre.

The five-star hotel has since replaced the private surgical centre after the surgery was met with some opposition in the local medical community. There was also no guarantee that Whistler residents would be able to access the private surgery through the Medical Service Plan.

Haibeck said is giving the WHCC over $1 million because he felt he had built false hope for improved medical facilities in town.

"We want to keep that promise," he said. "That’s just us being responsible."

From private surgeries to luxury hotels, from transferring bed units to creating new ones, the Nita Lake Lodge development has morphed dramatically from its inception.

Since the story has changed so much, Haibeck says it’s now time to get the story straight. He said this will allow both the public and council to weight the options accordingly.

"It’s a lot of information that’s changed," he said.

"It’s not just a simple story. There’s a lot of pieces to it."