Location, location, location.
Next to customer service and great pricing, there’s no more important key to success in operating a successful business than location.
And that’s why the proposal to build as many as 275 residential units across from the Walnut Beach Resort on Lakeshore Drive doesn’t appear to be a very good idea.
As was pointed out time and time again at a public hearing that attracted close to three dozen people in a jam-packed council chambers at Town Hall, the ramifications of allowing such a large development at this particular site would be enormous.
Chris Moradian, who was representing Richard Coglon, President of RLC Strategic Corporation Management, has applied to the Town of Osoyoos to have 14 acres rezoned so the development company he represents can build between 234-274 single-family homes and townhouses as well as two four-storey apartment/tourist accommodation towers on the lower end of the property.
In theory, a massive development like this would normally be exceptionally good news for a booming tourist town like Osoyoos.
However, the proposed location for this development just doesn’t work in so many ways.
During the busy tourist season – particularly between the middle of May until the end of September – Lakeshore Drive is, quite frankly, a “zoo.”
There are a couple of dozen campgrounds featuring more than 1,400 campsites, the elegant, but exceptionally busy Walnut Beach Resort, an insanely busy RV Park and hugely successful waterslide park mixed in alongside dozens of residential homes.
Take a drive down Lakeshore Drive in the middle of the summer and you will observe and endure an endless line of children running back and forth across the street, with a parade of large trucks carrying large boats along a narrow roadway that stretches for four kilometres.
Adding more than 200 more residential units along what is already an insanely busy stretch of roadway just doesn’t make a lot of sense.
And there is nowhere else to go considering the development proposal is surrounded by Osoyoos Lake on the west and a huge residential neighbourhood on the Town’s East Bench above it.
The existing site appears to be nothing more than a giant swamp and there’s no doubt the cost of developing the site would be astronomical.
It doesn’t take a certified mathematician to figure out the developer wants to build this many units in order to try and recover the exorbitant costs that would be involved at this particular site.
Kudos to all of the speakers at Monday’s meeting as the public hearing didn’t dissolve into endless screaming and yelling, as often happens at hearings like this.
But the dozen or so speakers who did address council made it very clear that the size and scope of this development at the proposed site simply doesn’t make sense.
It would be extremely difficult to disagree.
Lakeshore Drive is already hectic enough and the impact of adding dozens of more residential units and hundreds of owners/visitors in the next few years would make the existing issues pale in comparison.
No one can blame Moradian and the development company he represents from trying to bring a quality project to our community.
Unfortunately, the site they have selected just won’t work and it’s very doubtful the current council or any future council would approve it as it currently stands.
If the developer agrees to significantly downsize this project, there’s a good chance it could proceed, but there’s almost zero chance of a project of this size ever being approved now or in the future.
