About a dozen Squamish residents gathered at Gelato Carina on Cleveland Avenue last week to delve into the issue of development and to gain some insight into Coun. Greg Gardner, who is rumoured to be an anticipated mayoral candidate for the 2008 municipal elections.
Through the Leadership Sea to Sky program, the Whistler Forum's Dialogue Café took place Thursday, Sept. 13, requesting residents join Gardner in discussing the development of municipal Oceanfront lands.
The subject matter quickly broadened, however, to delve into philosophical approaches to development, while participants assessed Gardner himself.
"I had a few things on my mind," said John Buchanan when asked why he attended the event. "Greg Gardner. There's talk about town that he'll be running for mayor - although he hasn't said so - so I just want to see what kind of character he has."Resident Graham Fuller also said he attended the dialogue in part because he wanted to get a sense of Gardner's position on development.
"Obviously he's a significant and possibly up-and-coming figure in town politics, and has been prominent in many issues up to now," said Fuller. "So I wanted to get a better sense of what he's all about, where he's coming from."
Both participants said they came away with a better - if not a wholly concrete - sense of Gardner's take on the issue."I'm still unclear with him, I'm not really sure where he's coming from," said Buchanan.
"I think like any intelligent politician," said Fuller, "he's not going to necessarily commit himself philosophically on huge issues.
"But I thought he was fairly honestly reactive when we put him under pressure in particular to talk about developmental red lines."
Gardner, who was elected in a June 2006 byelection on a platform that opposed the direction the district-owned Squamish Oceanfront Development Corporation (SODC) was taking with regards to the development of the former Nexen lands, said he now believes that process is going "very well."
"Ironically we're back to where I thought the SODC was going initially, which was that a planning process would occur before we decided how to develop that land and who would develop it.
"It's even better than that, because we're now in a planning process that will see the whole peninsula planned as a unit," he added, referring to the newly-formed Peninsula Landowners Cooperative (PLC), which brings together all private and public stakeholders into an agreement to plan the entire downtown waterfront together.
The added bonus, he said, is that the private stakeholders, Westmana and BC Rail, have agreed to pay 50 per cent of the planning process while the SODC pays the rest.
As for the broader question of development, Gardner said he believes growth should be managed, and invoking a municipal cap could only lead to more harm to the surrounding area.
"Other areas end up being developed outside the municipality and the result can be urban sprawl." Rather, "sound planning principles" should be used to create higher density in the downtown, and compact, walkable communities.Development itself is not the problem, said Buchanan, as long as the district takes careful steps to mitigate environmental impact.
Buchanan said he enjoyed having a public forum where he's given the opportunity to express his notions about the way development occurs in Squamish, and to get politicians "on the record."
He said he's trying to build awareness of the impact to wilderness corridors along Loggers Lane that would result from a proposed 190-unit development in the neighbourhood.
"It's like putting a cork in a bottle for wildlife coming out of the mountains and into the valley," he said.The district is listening to the public's comments, said Gardner.
"We're taking those concerns seriously," he said. "There's a lot of discussion about it at the council level and at the staff level."
The dialogue is meant to facilitate the exchange of information and to "go for the juice of the collective wisdom," said moderator and Whistler Forum president William Roberts.
"It's not polarizing people with their minds made up and trying to convince other people of the rightness of their position," he said. "This is trying to understand more, trying to listen more, trying to talk things through in a way that instills more trust."
