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Imagine the possibilities

Squamish’s opportunity on the waterfront came through years of remediation work Picture a white piece of paper, a green field of sorts. Now imagine several kilometres of prime waterfront, one of the last remaining working estuaries in B.C.

Squamish’s opportunity on the waterfront came through years of remediation work

Picture a white piece of paper, a green field of sorts. Now imagine several kilometres of prime waterfront, one of the last remaining working estuaries in B.C., spectacular seaside views and mountain vistas, and a 300-metre beach kissing the most southerly fjord on the Pacific Coast. Add to that the irrepressible force of the 2010 Olympic Games and an impassioned community champing at the bit and you have a recipe for endless opportunity.

Three weeks ago, Squamish was merely talking about the latent possibilities of waterfront development. But with the purchase of 71 acres of land bordering Howe Sound from the provincial government last month for a tidy $1, Squamish finds itself jettisoned into the potential realities of the future; a challenging yet tacitly daunting opportunity as the community redefines itself for the 21 st century.

"Squamish has to turn these challenges around and see them not as daunting," said Bob Purdy, director of corporate development with the Fraser Basin Council at a Squamish Chamber of Commerce luncheon Tuesday, "but take a dauntless attitude, where nothing seems impossible or insurmountable, to find maybe not the perfect solution but the best solution."

The Fraser Basin Council has taken a lead role in assisting Squamish in "finding itself" for the past eight months. At the invitation of Mayor Ian Sutherland, Purdy and his team held a "Strengthening Communities" dialogue session last April. It was at this meeting that the waterfront became more than the political focus of the newly elected council. The varied and diverse members of the community, including representative from Interfor, BC Rail, and other stakeholders, overwhelmingly saw the waterfront as the town’s greatest asset, an untapped resource that needed to be made a priority. The result of the meeting: a recommendation that the Fraser Basin Council consider facilitating multi-interest consultation on the future of the downtown waterfront.

Yet waterfront development is not a new concept for Squamish. Prior to the construction of the railway in 1956 and Highway 99 in 1958 south to Vancouver, Squamish was a rural town accessible only by boat. A pier at the end of the peninsula south of present-day downtown welcomed all to the region; a hotel situated on what is now a log sort south of Vancouver Street was the largest and most impressive structure in the town centre.

For the past 40 years, the peninsula continued to be dominated by industry. Log sorts, chemical plants and other heavy industry used the rail and water access to their benefit, employing many workers in this resource-based town.

As the community evolved in a changing world so did its collective vision of the downtown waterfront; many people in the community saw it as more than a gateway for industry. When a local logging company proposed a chip loading and transfer facility on the waterfront three years ago, the call for a "smart" waterfront for families, recreation, the environment and industrial uses in appropriate locations was overwhelming. The proposed chip transfer facility failed amid great turmoil and debate. Many pundits labelled Squamish a community divided: old versus new, logging versus tourism, a town stagnant with opposing forces.

For the past three years, there appeared to be very little progress – if not decline – on the waterfront; log sorts slowed and other industrial operations closed. But unbeknownst to much of the community, Nexen, one of Canada’s largest oil and gas companies, was cleaning its site: a 71-acre parcel leased from BC Rail with an estimated commercial value of between $50 million and $70 million on the Squamish waterfront.

At the turn of the century the end of the downtown peninsula was a large Pacific Great Eastern rail and shipping yard, evidence of which is still found on the site. A ferry terminal followed until Canadian Oxydental Petroleum Ltd. established a chemical plant there in 1965.

According Dave Boulter, Nexen’s project manager in Squamish, most of the contamination occurred in the early operations of the chemical plant when "there weren’t a lot of environmental controls." When Nexen started remediation in 1997 the company anticipated cleaning the site up to industrial standards. But as the project progressed it became clear that the potential of the site far exceeded its industrial past.

"We decided to do the best job we could to get the best land use possible, and head office supported us in whatever we decided," said Boulter. "So we did that to the limit of what was technically feasible."

Five years and $40 million later, Nexen’s remediation responsibilities have been fulfilled, says Boulter. Over the course of the cleanup, Nexen excavated 300,000 metric tonnes of soil, debris and sludge, and backfilled an additional 100,000 tonnes. More than 150,000 tonnes were shipped for disposal in sanctioned dumping sites in Alberta while new estuary-specific remediation techniques were developed, spawning at least two new chemical remediation companies in the area.

"In layman’s terms that’s 1,700 rail cars (of soil) shipped to Alberta for disposal," says Boulter, "and 20,000 (large dump) trucks that brought in 400,000 tonnes of backfill. We estimate that we actually moved 3 million tonnes in the process of remediating all the industrially impacted land."

After five years of working on the site, Boulter sees the diverse multi-use development potential. He likens the possibilities to Vancouver’s Granville Island, where light industrial operations mix with theatres, artist workshops, restaurants, a hotel, market place, marina and public spaces in creating a unique urban experience.

This vision of Squamish’s waterfront is shared by Councillors Jeff Dawson and Dave Fenn, chair and vice chair of the District’s Downtown Waterfront Development Committee.

"If done right, this site will make Granville Island look like a lemonade stand," quips Dawson while touring the site. "All kidding aside, there is so much potential and opportunity to develop the waterfront. Now we’ve got to do it right."

Fenn agrees.

"It’s been very clear by the strong level of public input to date that this is very important to the community. I hope that there is a strong public process in the next three months that clarifies the vision and the types of public amenities that we collectively want."

The collective vision Fenn is talking about brings us back to the Fraser Basin Council and their collaboration with the UBC Sustainable Communities Project. Together they are leading Squamish through a public charette process with the goal of creating a clear vision of how to develop the waterfront in Downtown Squamish. The Squamish Downtown Waterfront Initiative, as it is called, held its first public workshop Tuesday, Dec. 9 at the Sea to Sky Hotel. More than 120 residents participated in the event, the first in a series of workshops leading up to the final charette in February.

"At the end of the process we will have a clarified vision that we can hand off to an arm’s length Waterfront Development Corporation," Fenn explains. "It will be their job to implement that vision over the coming years."