The waitlist for employee housing has now topped 530.
Every year another 100 people sign up in the hope of getting price-restricted housing.
With those numbers in mind it may be difficult to imagine that Whistler could ever catch up to the unrelenting demand, but Mayor Ken Melamed is optimistic that once the athletes village for the 2010 Winter Olympics is offered up for sale Whistler could meet its desperate employee housing needs.
"It’s a little bit hard to imagine that we would one day be able to say employee housing is not a problem in Whistler," said Melamed.
"When you look at the total number of units that could potentially be delivered… we may (be able to) achieve a balanced or a stable product mix for employee housing in the resort."
But the athletes village is still four and a half years away.
In the meantime hundreds of employee housing units are in the pipeline.
Negotiations continue between developers and municipal staff and some deals are close to being approved. In a best-case scenario, Whistler could have more than 300 new units of employee housing built in the valley in the next few years.
The worry, said the mayor, is that after all these projects are approved, the demand for housing will have dried up and there will be little take up on the athletes village.
"There’s the rub," said Melamed. "… And I would suggest that council is going to need a significant amount of input from the community before it moves away from permanent to the concept of a temporary village.
"The appetite to do all temporary is not there."
Whistler Housing Authority General Manager Marla Zucht said even with all of the new housing between now and the Olympics, there will still be a demand by the time the athletes village comes online in the spring/summer of 2010.
She recognizes that there are skeptics but if Whistler plans smart, efficient and most importantly, affordable housing, she is confident there will still be take up.
"I do believe there still will be demand," she said.
WHA numbers show that even with all the upcoming projects there will still be 126 people waiting on the list by 2010. And that doesn’t account for the new people signing up every week.
Along with those signing up to buy in for the first time there is about 20 per cent currently in employee housing looking to move into bigger accommodation or new neighbourhoods.
Here’s a snapshot of potential employee housing opportunities either approved or in the pipeline.
Rainbow
Waitlisters will be offered a chance to buy one of 200 employee price-restricted units at Rainbow, if the development is approved.
At more than 350 units, 85 per cent of which will be either rental or for purchase employee housing, the proposed Rainbow development is Whistler’s biggest employee housing project to date.
The developers have been negotiating a deal with the municipality for almost a year. Talks are still ongoing about servicing costs, among other issues. The new council will be given an update of the project at the Dec. 19 workshop as developers continue to refine the plan.
"We’re doing detailed cross sections on all the individual parcels to make sure that we don’t have extremely steep sites that can’t be easily developed and we’re also looking at… efficient ways on how to develop the property, what they call bulk site preparation," said Michael von Hausen, of MVH Urban Planning & Design, who is a project manager for Rainbow.
The developers are hoping to be back before council for first and second reading early in the new year.
Rainbow, a 45-acre tract of land in between Alpine Meadows and Emerald Estates, will offer a range of housing with price restrictions. There will be duplexes, 4-plexes, multi-family, and single family. Two hundred units will be for purchase, the remainder will be rental. There will also be rental and purchase opportunities for seniors.
The development includes a sizable commercial core, complete with a grocery store, bank, coffee shop and post office. There are also plans for a gas station on site as well as a day care.
In order to help pay for it all the developers are looking for zoning for 35 single-family market homes and 16 multi-family market homes.
There are 60 bed units associated with the site. In order to build all the market housing proposed the developers need 274 bed units.
Cressey/Shoestring Lodge/Boot Pub site
Project Development Manager David Evans is hoping to have 34 to 36 employee housing units ready for sale to the waitlist by the summer.
The units would be ready for occupancy roughly one year to 16 months after that.
Planning is moving along steadily on the residential development which will bring 41 market townhouses to White Gold along with the employee housing.
There have been some recent changes.
Cressey had proposed to keep a pub and a cold beer and wine store on site but subsequent negotiations have removed any commercial zoning at the six-acre Shoestring Lodge site. Instead there will be another cluster of market homes.
Evans said they are also coming to a resolution on the flood issues associated with the site and he hopes council will be able to consider the bylaws for the first time in early February.
The employee housing units will be ground-oriented stacked townhomes. They will range in size from 970 square feet at the smallest to 1,550 square feet.
This development will more than satisfy Cressey’s outstanding commitment for 126 employee bed units, required for building the Westin Resort & Spa.
The development in its preliminary design will use 164 market bed units out of the 206 on the site. The remaining 42 units will revert back to the municipality.
Nita Lake townhomes/Function Junction apartments
The last council approved two employee housing developments in its term as it worked on other deals which are now coming to fruition.
The Nita Lake townhomes will see 44 units on Alta Lake Road at the entrance to the development of the upscale Nita Lake market homes.
The employee housing units were supposed to be ready for sale earlier but a lawsuit on the development and subsequent financial issues pushed back their delivery. They are expected to be ready for occupancy in October 2006.
Also expected to come online this year is a complex at the north end of Function Junction. The apartment building will have 30 apartment style units for purchase.
With Rainbow (200), Cressey (36), Function Junction (30), and Nita Lake (44) that’s more than 300 for-purchase employee housing units which could be delivered in the next few years. There are a few smaller projects on the books too.
That leaves the 2010 Olympic athletes village on the horizon.
Preliminary design plans showed a neighbourhood with almost 500 units of employee housing, ranging from small, one-bedroom units to single-family homes. The units would not be offered at once but, if there is demand, there could be a staggered delivery of the products after the Games.
More details on the athletes village will be presented at a January open house.
