Storm Developing

Some years ago in Point Roberts, there were plans for a big golf course on the bluffs at the south eastern end of the peninsula. Several hundred acres were to be involved and I think there were also to be houses along the fairways. This was back before 9/11, I am pretty sure; back when we first came here. But the plan for this all fell apart for some reason. Later, a different 18-hole golf course was built up on the northwest side of the peninsula and, I suppose, everyone breathed a sigh of relief because surely we wouldn’t have two golf courses inflicted upon us. That completed golf course had its problems: it immediately adjoined the heron rookery, one of the largest on the West Coast. A lot of negotiation resulted in a special building schedule to keep the developers from irritating the herons during the nesting season. The developers followed the rules, but within two years of completion, the herons up and left anyway. Not actual partners to the negotiation, they were apparently irritated by some other part of the deal. So now we have the golf course but we don’t have the rookery. Unintended, if foreseeable, consequences.

The original golf course planned property, however, remains an issue. There are three pieces of it (roughly 100 acres each, I think): the first part is Lily Point, which is now a public park area. The second part appears to be the subject of negotiations for an additional park area, with big conservation groups actively involved. So things look good for maintaining those areas.

The third area, however, is more of a problem. There is now a plan before the county to create a gated community on that 100 acres: a private and gated “Beach Club,’ with about 100 residences, a ‘community center’ (in quotes because, of course, it wouldn’t be a center for the Point Roberts’ community, just for their community), and a swimming pool, and presumably an enormous amount of traffic increase down that narrow road that would bring those 100 families into town should they ever want to drop in to see how the other 95% lives. Emails have been flying about locally on this issue and clearly the air is growing thick with unhappiness.

Development rarely draws a lot of ‘Hurrahs!’ from local residents anywhere but, in the case of Point Roberts, everyone who lives here is a local resident with respect to any development that is planned. This development—unlike anything here on the Point--will, of course, be made possible by those recently discovered water connections (see July 30, 2008 post, below, ‘Mistake Were Made’). It’s not a done deal, of course. We are in a pretty bad time for selling a hundred high-end houses in a gated community inside another gated community and where access to the ROTUS is difficult at most times. It’s going to be a hard selling campaign: I mean it’s a Beach Club, but they’re high on the bluffs, way above the water: it’s more of an ‘Ocean View Club,’ at best. Nor will they be docking their boats at the bottom and thus never having to deal with the border for ingress and egress.

I don’t think it’s a project I’d be willing to invest in, but if nothing else, the past five or ten years have shown us that people are willing to sign bizarre pieces of paper if, thereby, they think they’re going to make money. The storm approaches.