Skip to content
Join our Newsletter

Rainbow’s new site plan makes the mark

Staff plans to bring bylaws forward next month

Municipal staff is now "cautiously optimistic" about the future of the proposed Rainbow residential subdivision.

In the last eight weeks significant revisions have been underway on the site plan, marking a substantial improvement from the last version of the plan.

While the general outline of the project remains the same – more than 300 residential units of employee housing, some market housing and a fairly large commercial core – the layout has improved to avoid major cuts and fills on the steep sections of the site.

"At this point we’re very cautiously optimistic that all the pieces seem to be falling quite nicely into place," said the municipality’s general manager of planning and development, Bob MacPherson, at Tuesday’s council meeting.

He is hopeful council will see the bylaws for the first time in roughly four weeks.

"That’s what we’re working like hell to make happen," he said.

And while there is still a lot of work to do between first reading of the bylaws and their ultimate adoption by council, MacPherson suggested site preparation could begin at Rainbow this summer at the developers’ risk. That means the developers will have no official guarantee the project will be approved.

"There is that possibility that some work can start this summer," said MacPherson.

Councillor Tim Wake questioned how the athletes village project, which was far behind Rainbow at one point, is now further along in the rezoning process. How has one leapfrogged the other, he asked.

MacPherson explained that while both projects have had their challenges, the athletes village site in the Lower Cheakamus is arguably a much easier site to develop. And Rainbow ran into problems in early 2006 as municipal staff raised several concerns with the developer’s site plan as proposed.

Council thanked staff for their work in getting the project back on track after it seemed like it was going to falter during the "dark days of January."

MacPherson, however, deflected the praise towards the developers.

He said: "The easy thing (for the developers) to do would have been to talk away from this."

Mayor casts tiebreaking vote on Bunbury proposal

In his first tiebreaker vote as mayor, Ken Melamed defeated a new version of an ongoing rezoning attempt by Alex Bunbury.

Bunbury owns a swath of land above Creekside on Whistler Mountain.

His latest proposal to council was that he be allowed to build two 5,000 square foot homes (the largest legal size which can be built in the resort municipality) and get council to legitimize once and for all zoning for the three homes already on the land. The land is only zoned for one home although the municipality recognizes there are 18 bed units on the site and therefore room for three legal but non-conforming 3,500 square foot homes.

In return for this zoning Bunbury had proposed to build three employee housing units, roughly 1,200 square feet in size, and create a ski out trail for the Kadenwood subdivision.

Councillors Tim Wake, Ralph Forsyth and Gord McKeever were all on side to allow the Bunbury proposal to keep moving through the rezoning process and move to an open house to canvass the community.

Wake and Forsyth both expressed a willingness to try to work with Bunbury on a proposal suitable to both sides.

Councillor Nancy Wilhelm-Morden, who said this was a difficult situation because Bunbury was a friend, called for council to put the proper zoning in place for three homes "and call it a day."

Councillor Eckhard Zeidler didn’t like the math of the proposal. He said two 5,000 square foot homes in return for three 1,200 square foot employee housing units didn’t seem like a good trade at all. With Councillor Bob Lorriman opposing the project too, Melamed was forced to cast the tiebreaking vote and the proposal was defeated.

Bunbury’s land and the three houses are it is still non-conforming to the zoning.

Olympic spending questioned again

More than five months ago Whistlerite Brian Buchholz asked council just how much the Olympics were costing the town.

With no answer in the ensuing months he asked the question again on Tuesday night.

Buchholz explained that when he asked the question the first time, in October 2005, the previous council gave him the impression an answer would be forthcoming.

But he has yet to see how much money the municipality has spent on the Olympics to date.

"There’s a number," said Buchholz. "There’s got to be a dollar number to this."

At the time he asked his first question he was told there was no one line item in the municipal budget which tallied Olympic spending.

Expenses such as staff and council trips to Park City to learn from their experiences were absorbed into other budgets within the municipality.

In January newly-elected councillor Bob Lorriman asked the same question about tracking Olympic spending. Mayor Ken Melamed told him there would be efforts made to track the spending, particularly the hard costs such as travel expenses and supplies. Staff time, said the mayor, would be a little more difficult to track.

On Tuesday in response to Buchholz, Melamed assured him again that there would be definitive numbers made available.

"Council has not been deaf to the question," he said.

Administrator Bill Barratt said staff would go back over the 2005 spending and provide the number.

Council increases transit budget, offsets rising fuel costs

Rising fuel costs have forced the municipality to dig into its pockets for additional funding for its transit system.

On Tuesday council approved an amendment that gives the Whistler and Valley Express (WAVE) transit system an additional $100,000 as per the 2005-06 operating agreement.

Staff explained in a report to council that due to rising world oil prices municipal transit systems have experienced a rise in fuel costs over and above what is already allotted in their budgets.

The $100,000 increase also includes the rising fuel costs associated with the Sea to Sky Transit bus service that runs between Squamish and Whistler. The service will run until March 31, 2006.

The Resort Municipality of Whistler and the District of Squamish share the cost of that project equally.