The YMCA has operated the legendary camp for 60 years. But business is business, and the Y is willing to give up Howdy
Peter Clough
Province
Kaity MacDonald, with her dad Murray, plans to return to Camp Howdy this summer — and hopes that the camp will be around for years to come. Photograph by : Jason Payne, The Province
Concert Properties’ proposed 42-storey apartment tower would soar above a dramatically renovated YMCA on Burrard Street. Photograph by : Les Bazso, The Province
At Camp Howdy kids learn all the outdoor skills they’ll need. Photograph by : Les Bazso, The Province
Rustic yet cozy — that’s the experience you get at Camp Howdy which heads into its last summer as a Greater Vancouver tradition for kids. Photograph by : Arlen Redekop, The Province
Map of area Photograph by : Arlen Redekop, The Province
Do a Google Earth zoom down to Farrer Cove on the eastern shores of Indian Arm and you’ll almost hear the sound of campfire songs.
Over the past six decades, hundreds of thousands of kids from across the Lower Mainland have bounced along the logging road that leads to Camp Howdy — lugging along guitars, sleeping bags and hiking boots.
The camp, owned and operated by the YMCA, has given many of those kids their first taste of the B.C. wilderness.
It’s where they’ve learned to water ski, chop wood, climb rocks and make friends out of strangers — miles away from the comforting arms of moms and dads.
This summer, however, the air at Camp Howdy will be tinged with sadness. Late-night talks around the campfire will no doubt turn to the obvious topic:
Why does this have to be the final year for Greater Vancouver’s only overnight wilderness experience for kids?
This may well be the summer that the camp’s young guests learn more about the ways of the city and big business than about surviving in the great outdoors.
They’ll learn all about capital development funds, sustainable growth, zoning bylaws and how B.C.’s real estate boom has made the 74-acre piece of West Coast paradise irresistible to developers.
And some of them may well go home wondering whether Camp Howdy is being traded away as part of a complex deal to put up a 42-storey apartment building in downtown Vancouver.
For five years, the YMCA has been involved in negotiations to sell at least part of the Camp Howdy site north of Belcarra for condo development. Their aim has been to raise about $10 million from the sale, funds they claim are needed for other camps and community projects.
Under the plan, the Y would keep the camp running as a day centre — but even that is now in jeopardy.
So gather ’round, kids. This is a story that takes more twists and turns than the trail to Sasamat Lake — a trail that, according to some, leads to the 2010 Winter Olympics.
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Belcarra resident Murray MacDonald, whose 11-year-old daughter Kaity is looking forward to staying at Camp Howdy again this summer, has been one of the most vocal opponents of the Y’s handling of the issue.
MacDonald has accused Y officials of behaving like bottom-line businessmen in their effort to raise money from their Howdy property. He says the Y’s claim that they need the money to improve Camp Elphinstone on the Sunshine Coast and support numerous community programs is little more than a smokescreen.
“They want as much money as they can possibly extract from Camp Howdy in order to finance the new building downtown,” says MacDonald, referring to the YMCA’s plan to modernize their facility on Burrard Street and add a private 42-storey residential tower in partnership with developers Concert Properties. “The story they’ve given us, of course, is slightly more skewed toward how this money will improve things for other camps.”
Under the Y’s plan, endorsed by Belcarra Mayor Ralph Drew and village council, 27 acres of the site was to be sold to a private developer for the building of between 80 and 100 homes. Another 47 acres was to be handed over to the GVRD as parkland.
Belcarra changed its official community plan, opening the door for future residential development on the site. But before any zoning change could be made, they needed approval from neighbouring Port Moody to allow direct and paved road access through that municipality’s portion of Belcarra Regional Park.
The plan to put up condos in such an isolated area caught the attention of GVRD policy and planning manager Hugh Kellas, who opposed the plan, citing transportation and environmental concerns.
Then last month Port Moody councillors rejected Belcarra’s road request, effectively killing the Y’s proposal. After all, who wants to live in a condo at the end of a long dirt road?
Port Moody’s refusal did not, however, mean that Camp Howdy was saved.
Saying the status quo was simply not an option, the Y’s president and CEO Bill Stewart announced that his organization would put the entire property on the market. Some Belcarra residents scoffed at what they saw as a bargaining ploy — saying that without a road and a zoning change the land is worth no more than $3 million and of little interest to developers.
But in an interview with The Province, Stewart says the Y has already received two unsolicited offers to buy the land outright, along with a third expression of interest.
He refuses to divulge details of the offers but says he estimates the Camp Howdy property to be worth between $8 million and $12 million regardless of road and zoning issues.
“There are people in our community and around the world who buy pieces of property for the future and not for the present,” says Stewart. He says the Y will not seek a commitment from prospective buyers to keep Camp Howdy running.
Stewart insists that the sale of Camp Howdy is not directly linked to the Y’s ambitious project, in partnership with Concert Properties, to modernize the Burrard Street YMCA and add a 42-storey private residential tower.
The tower?
Five years ago, Y officials approached leaders of the First Baptist Church, their next-door neighbour on Burrard Street, with a view to seeking zoning changes from the City of Vancouver.
First Baptist agreed to waive any concerns about the building of the tower in exchange for expanding its property through the acquisition of a parking lot the Y owned right behind the church.
The city gave its blessing to the project last fall, and the Y went ahead and sold the airspace above its building to Concert Properties for an undisclosed sum.
Concert is an award-winning B.C. development company wholly owned by unions and pension plans. It specializes in building luxury condos and upscale apartments — such as Tapestry, at the former Vancouver General Hospital nurses’ residence.
In its deal with the Y, Concert gets a new apartment building and a contract to complete the Y’s $35-million transformation of its aging facility at the tower’s base — right down to a state-of-the-art swimming pool.
Stewart says he’s counting on the project being completed by the fall of 2009 in time to showcase it during the 2010 Olympics.
In 2003, when the Y presented an online overview of its plan to sell Camp Howdy, “replace the Downtown YMCA” was listed as one of the major benefits. Stewart now says it’s “erroneous” to link the Howdy sale with the Y’s development deal. He says the non-profit organization needs between $6 million and $9 million to fulfill its obligations on the project, money that will be raised through a capital funds campaign.
“That’s going out and asking people to give us money,” he says. “We’re doing that now.”
Stewart says the YMCA has been in the process of building a $50-million capital development fund aimed at expanding its services. The money raised from the sale of Camp Howdy is part of that overall plan but he says the proceeds will be directed specifically to community projects such as a new child-care centre in Mount Pleasant as well as to much-needed improvements at Camp Elphinstone.
“We’re going to build some special lodges out there so we can handle kids and families with challenges and also fix up our general camp,” says Stewart. He promises: “We’re going to be bigger in camping than we are today.”
But Pat Godwin, whose now-grown sons both attended Camp Howdy, is not convinced.
“What Bill Stewart really wants the money for is this highrise downtown,” she says.
The Coquitlam mom has started a group called Save Camp Howdy and is hoping that the thousands of British Columbians who learned so much during their stay at the facility will join her campaign to keep the camp running as an overnight wilderness experience.
She says this is the last chance to save one of the Lower Mainland’s irreplaceable treasures.
“You drive there and you feel like you’re in the middle of nowhere, even though you’re 20 minutes from civilization,” she says. “To me, the whole thing about camp is that you’re away from home. You don’t go back home every day. You don’t have mommy and daddy backing you up. You’re learning to co-operate and make friends.”
Her son Jesse, a UBC student, has fond memories of his summers at Camp Howdy. “Every night you’d go down to the campfire and we’d have singing,” he says. “Every group had to produce a skit or do a song or whatever. It was just a fun communal thing.”
As a young adult, Jesse worked at the camp as a counsellor. He’s a firm supporter of the Y’s programs and says he understands the organization’s need to keep pace with modern realities.
“They’re strapped for money and they need facilities to service other communities that need it,” he says. “They’re not doing it for the wrong reasons, but it’s sad what’s happening. It would be best if there was a solution where the Y could get the money to do what they need to do with their downtown building — as well as maintain the camp.”
Vancouver lawyer Roy Millen, also a Camp Howdy counsellor in his youth, says it will be a tragedy to lose the facility or see it turned into a day centre. “There were a lot of kids who’d never been out in the forest before,” he recalls. “Lots of kids had never been in a canoe before. They’d never done any hiking.”
He says day camp simply cannot offer the same kind of experience.
Mayor Drew of Belcarra, meanwhile, says it’s too bad the original deal was killed — just one step from being completed in a way that would have left the camp running as a day centre.
Now, he says, the best hope is that the GVRD will ride to the rescue by buying the land outright and finding someone — possibly the Y — to operate the camp.
While the Y is considering offers from private developers, it is also negotiating with the GVRD, which has expressed an interest in acquiring the property. But will the GVRD be able to match the offers the Y says it has already received from private developers?
Drew says he’s hoping to hear an answer from the GVRD by the end of March. “At this point, my speculation is even odds,” he says. “We’ve got our fingers crossed.”
So, too, does Kaity MacDonald. Her Camp Howdy hat is hanging by the front door and she’s hoping to wear it this summer — and next summer, too.
Kaity talks of the friends she met there and of the memories she’ll treasure all her life.
“Camp Howdy should be standing for my children as well as my grandchildren so they can have the same great experiences as me,” she says.
© The Vancouver Province 2006
