We would like to thank Town Council for their time hearing our proposal to rezone Apple Beach campground to residential. Even if the answer was ‘no’ at least now, we can plan accordingly. Businesses do have to plan ahead.
After and nine months and $9559 spent, we are still no clearer as to what options the town would accept. However, after being dragged through two public hearings, the town feels that they need more public input. We feel, that if residents were strongly opposed to removing a campground from the town, that more people would have attended a public hearing, or written to the town. Only one person (from Alberta) attended to say they were opposed. I was disappointed that a couple of letters supporting our application from neighbouring properties written prior to the official public hearing were ignored at the public hearing.
For our property, and we would guess other properties looking to rezone, they will need to wait until the town re-write of the OCP, which may take a few years. The one option we don’t have is to leave the property as is, because the trees on our property are coming to the end of their natural life.
My guess (and until OCP review, we are left to guessing) is that our property will now need to retain a tourism aspect. We will continue to explore the building of youth hostel and/or youth campground.
James & Catherine Hodge, Oliver
