Houses are bounded by forest on three sides and beach and strait on the fourth
Douglas Cowell
Sun
The Qualicum Landing construction manager, Jim Ferrie, calls the architectural style of the homes Westcoast Cape Cod. His mother likes what she’s seen and heard enough to buy. ‘I think she wants to have a place where all the grandchildren will come and get together.’
Rarely is a groundbreaking ceremony the stuff of daily newpapering. When the ground broken, however, is broken in economically troubled times and when the Strait of Georgia and a shoreline about to receive beach homes are in the background, ceremony trumps.
‘We just decided we weren’t going to take part in the recession and carried on,’ David Steele says of the decision to start work on the property. Mountain memories have validated his approach to his sea-level work, co-developer Steele reports. ‘They’ve been totally self sufficient for hundreds of years,’ he says of the Andean village he visited on his way up to Mach Picchu, in Peru. ‘I found it quite inspirational and it reinforced in me that the path we’re on here is really good. You don’t have to five up the luxuries, but with a little more thought and attention you can produce a very special project.’
QUALICUM LANDING
Project location: Qualicum Beach, Vancouver Island
Project size: 62 detached beach homes
Residence size: 1,180 sq. ft. – 2,000 sq. ft., 3 bed
Prices: $399,000 — $1,249,000
Telephone: 604-220-6249
E-mail: [email protected]
Web: qualicumlanding.com
Developer: Qualicum Developments Ltd.
Design: John Larsen, CA Design
Tentative occupancy: From December
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The east coast of Vancouver Island is one of Canada‘s most beautiful and enjoyable geographies. Located in the lee of the Vancouver Island Ranges, the climate is warm and dry in the summer and cool and moist the rest of the year. Located on the Strait of Georgia with the mainland’s Coast Range across the way, the views and prospects are inevitably arresting and changing.
Of course this isn’t news. People have been living — indeed, flourishing — along the Island‘s east coast for at least 9,000 years.
So it was quite a surprise to discover some waterfront for sale while poking along the old Island Highway, a little housing development hidden from the highway and opening onto the ocean, 10 minutes north of Qualicum Beach. How could this be?
It turns out that developers David Steele and Pat Delesalle had been dreaming of just such a property. They could find nothing that would work, however, until one of their contacts in the building industry tipped them off about a new possibility coming on the market. They didn’t waste time.
“Right from the beginning it was a very spectacular piece of property,” Steele explains, and seemed to demand something special. “We’re really excited about what we’ve designed, and I think it fits what the property should do.”
Qualicum Landing’s 62 beach homes will be located on almost 16 acres. On one side, buffered by a line of trees, is Oceanside Drive. Another boundary is forested, the third is a small stream up which salmon still run and finally, to the northwest, the Strait of Georgia gives the whole area its wonderful character.
It’s a strata arrangement, with each owner holding title to his or her building, but the property will be owned by the strata council and managed by a management company. That includes all maintenance and repairs.
Jim Ferrie, the construction manager on the project has nicknamed the homes’ architecture Westcoast Cape Cod. He’s been a builder for decades. He’s an old hand. And yet on this project you can tell that he’s excited.
“It’s such a unique project. There’s very little property like it available in all of western Canada: level waterfront land. Then add in luxury, stand-alone beach homes. We’re selling a different property!
“As a contractor I can assure you it’s all of the highest quality in both materials and craftsmanship right from the foundation to the finish. It’s what you’ll find in West Vancouver.”
His excitement has been rubbing off, it seems. “My mother just bought one of the units here; I think she wants to have a place where all the grandchildren will come and get together.” Then he adds “I expect to see it passed down within the family over the years,” he predicts.
“In this business, you know, you build a condo; you build a house. That’s the job. But with this project we’re building a community.”
And he’s right. At least that’s the intention of both the developers and their designer, John Larsen of Island-based CA Design.
They have done as much as possible to encourage eventual owners and occupants to interact and get to know each other. There will be lots of common areas: lawn, trails, a sports court for basketball and tennis. There is even a community garden going in where residents can have their own plots.
There will also be a central clubhouse with a members’ lounge and two hot tubs. Ferrie explains that they did some research about how hot tubs were used in other resort communities.
“First, we found that people wanted to be sure that children were able to enjoy the water, too, but then we discovered that adults and children seem to have different ideas of what sort of behavior was appropriate in a spa. Thus: two hot tubs.
They also discovered that while people loved to spend time in the hot tub, they tended to spend more time lounging around it. Thus Ferrie built an expansive deck.
Although one home has been finished for several months now, to serve as a sales office, site prep and underground-services installation are just finishing up. The start of construction of the first homes is imminent.
If the attention to detail and careful, thoughtful planning evident in site work and sales centre are carried forward into the homes, the results should be a stunning and comfortable community in which to live.
The whole development is designed to be as environmentally benign as possible and to be self-sufficient.
The homes are well insulated and although electric heating is an option, the more expensive units come with heat pumps. Ferrie reports that so far everyone who has committed has selected the optional heat pumps.
Rain water will be collected from the roofs and stored for landscape watering. Much of the lumber is recycled. Although as many trees as possible are being left standing a number of large Douglas firs had to be cut.
Rather than buy the exposed beams used in everyhuset, the company is bringing in a portable sawmill to mill them from the logs they already have.
The small Fletcher Creek that forms one boundary still supports a few spawning salmon every year, but it is something of a miracle that that is so.
Qualicum Developments, with the advice and encouragement of the federal fisheries department, will soon begin restoring the creek, pulling out blackberries and other invasive species, cleaning out garbage and removing logjams. The banks will be restored and replanted with native species.
Such attention to environmental concerns has become common with many developments in the province recently, and are demanded by many municipalities. So it’s no surprise to see such features at Qualicum Landing. But one gets a hint that there’s more to the story by the fact that David Steele this spring visited Machu Picchu in the Andes.
“They’re very ingenious how they’ve lived and adapted to the area and how they’ve modified it to better support them,” Steele says of the Andean villages he passed through on his way up to the UNESCO World Heritage Site. ”They’ve been totally self sufficient for hundreds of years. I found it quite inspirational and it reinforced in me that the path we’re on here is really good. You don’t have to give up the luxuries, but with a little more thought and attention you can produce a very special project.”
One of the very special things about Qualicum Landing is that the prices have been reduced over the winter – with the cuts ranging from $150,000 to $250,000. How was it even possible to offer such massive price cuts?
Steele replies that over the winter, when they were reminded that the country was in difficult financial times and perhaps they should put off launching the project:
“We just decided we weren’t going to take part in the recession and carried on.”
It wasn’t quite as cavalier as he makes it sound. With construction on hold everywhere the company was able to go back to its suppliers and contractors and reduce costs. “We passed all of these savings on to our customers and pared down our own profit expectations, too.”
Moreover, while buyers put down deposits and lock in the current prices, construction will proceed in phases over the next couple of years. The company is gambling that the market will go up over that time and that they’ll be able to raise their prices on units built later. If that happens, those who buy now with investment values in mind will be looking pretty good.
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