GOING GREEN: Market grows for sustainable getaway places

KATHRYN YOUNG
Province

As more green-minded Canadians look to spend their vacation dollars in ecofriendly places, environmentally sensitive resorts, hotels, inns and lodges are popping up like organic mushrooms.

Whitewater Village, a 38cottage year-round ecoresort planned by Windmill Developments, one of Canada’s top green builders, is just the latest addition to the growing list of such vacation venues across the country.

Featuring geothermal heating and cooling, solar hot water and electricity, the development will break ground in spring 2008 along the Ottawa River near rapids that draw whitewater rafters and kayakers from around the world.

Whitewater Village will be surrounded by an 1,800hectare land trust to keep further development at bay, aims to be carbon neutral and will have a peat moss sanitation system.

The exterior of the cottages, generally two-storey structures, will be constructed of logs certified by the Forest Stewardship Council. Interior features will include bamboo floors, wool carpets, formaldehydefree kitchen cabinets and recycled-paper countertops.

“We feel it’s a fairly untapped market,” said Jonathan Westeinde, Windmill’s managing partner.

“It’s a little outside the box for what we do but part of the reason we’re there is it interests me a lot. When you look at the market for green and sustainable, you’re getting downtown urban condo dwellers and you’re getting a lot of cottage owners.” Urban condominiums have been the principal focus of Windmill, which has built such leading-edge projects as Dockside Green in Victoria, The Bridges (Acqua and Vento) in Calgary, and The Currents in Ottawa. All have been built to LEED (leadership in energy and environmental design) standards. Windmill will apply those principles to the eco-resort.

“All the interior finishes will be the same as if it was a LEED home,” Westeinde said.

Whitewater Village is aimed at families who might not be able to afford the rising cost of a cottage property, or be willing to put in the year-round commitment to a property that is actually used for only a portion of the year.

The 38 cottages will be sold on a fractional ownership basis — akin to a timeshare but the owner can sell and buy just as with any other real estate, said Westeinde. People can buy six weeks of cottage time, to be spread throughout the year, for prices ranging from $60,000 to $85,000.

Alberta’s Bridgegate on Crowsnest Lake is another enviro-friendly vacation resort southwest of Calgary that also permits fractional ownership of some of its condominium vacation homes. When completed, the development will include a five-star hotel, fitness centre, casino, shopping, restaurants and an organic micro-brew pub.

The complex will have a compact, low-impact design to prevent sprawl as well as greywater re-use, and alternative energy sources such as solar, wind and geothermal.

The market for eco-resorts is growing and will continue to do so, said Joseph Hnatiuk, president of the Saskatchewan Nature and Ecotourism Association, which has been accrediting ecotourist lodges, parks, hotels and tourism sites since 2000 under a program approved by the International Ecotourism Society.

The combination of millions of retiring baby boomers and the growing interest in environmental issues are behind the burgeoning market, he said.

“I’ve seen tremendous progress, but not as fast as I’d like to see it develop,” Hnatiuk said. “With the [current] attitude regarding the environment, it’s getting a little easier.”

If current trends continue, 2007 will be record year for sales

Province

OTTAWA — House prices across the country have hit new record highs this year, but higher lending rates could slow down the rise in home buying, according to an industry report.

In June 2007, the average house price was $315,332, a rise of 11.2 per cent from a year earlier, the Canadian Real Estate Association said.

This was the greatest yearly increase since August 2006.

According to CREA, average prices in June broke all previous monthly records in Alberta, Saskatchewan, Ontario, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland and Labrador.

At $446,893, the average price of a house in B. C. rose 11.2 per cent in 12 months maintaining its position at the top of the table, well ahead of Alberta at $364,072.

But Alberta is making rapid gains with an increase of 24.7 per cent since June 2006, only just behind the increase in Saskatchewan, where the average price of a house rose 34.9 per cent to $180,934 and a 28.8-per-cent increase in the Northwest Territories.

Sales activity set records in the first and second quarters. Sales for January to June of this year were ahead of levels for the same period last year in almost every province.

Sales activity in the first half of 2007 rose by 8.2 per cent compared to the same period in 2006 to 287,862 units. If current trends continue, 2007 will be a record year for sales.

Seasonally adjusted national sales activity rose to 133,612 units in the second quarter of 2007, a gain of 3.3 per cent on the previous quarter to reach the highest quarterly level on record.

New quarterly records for sales activity were set in Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia.

“The bank rate was hiked for the first time in over a year in July, and an additional increase is expected in September. Higher interest rates and additional housing-price increases will gradually impact affordability and housing demand over the second half of the year,” said CREA chief economist Gregory Klump.

“It is important to note that the low interest rates and flexible mortgage insurance options some Canadians have had access to in recent years do not provide all the support necessary for home ownership,” said Ann Bosley, CREA’s president.

“Recent research shows that ownership rates among younger Canadians and newer Canadians have been on the decline, in large part due to lower incomes and difficulty saving funds for a down payment,” she said.

© The Vancouver Province 2007

 

‘All this added cost will go to the bottom line and stop at consumers’

Ashley Ford
Province

Vancouver building contractors and developers say they are being hammered by the ongoing Vancouver civic strike.

Hundreds of millions of dollars in projects are either going slowly or nowhere because of the strike, the Greater Vancouver Homebuilders’ Association Peter Simpson said yesterday.

“We are urging both sides to expedite a settlement as quickly as possible,” he said.

An e-mail survey by the association shows Vancouver builders are becoming increasingly frustrated with the work stoppage and Simpson says added costs will hit consumers down the road.

“We have received complaints varying from an empty construction bin being filled with garbage overnight to multimillion-dollar projects being put on hold and everything in between,” Simpson said.

Unable to get permits or permit approvals for work already completed, many projects have shut down shop and that is costing developers and contractors hundreds of thousands of dollars a month simply to maintain.

On top of that, said Simpson, because of an acute shortage of skilled labour, most contractors are holding on to their workers because they fear that if they let them go they will not come back.

“One member told me he is getting his workers to wash trucks and clean other equipment at $26 an hour,” he said.

Bill Eden, owner of the Eden Group of Companies, has two projects worth more than $100 million stalled and that alone will cost him over $100,000 a month.

“We have a 119-unit project worth $65 million at East 7th and Main that is going nowhere at the moment, and a 31-unit high-end townhome project worth $30 million-plus at Oak and 43rd can’t begin because we cannot get the necessary permits,” he said.

“Sure, I am worried. I could lose my trades, let alone the thousands of dollars we have to pay for just sitting on our hands.

“How long we can sit and wait? I just don’t know,” Eden said.

“But one thing is for sure, all this added cost will go to the bottom line and stop at consumers.” Simpson said that even before the strike the city was behind in issuing permits. “It will be even worse when we come back,” he said.

Residential construction is one of the major economic powers in Greater Vancouver. Last year, the industry provided 63,297 direct and indirect jobs with wages totalling $2.7 billion.

The value of new-home construction was $4.5 billion with another $200 million being spent on home renovation and repair work.

© The Vancouver Province 2007