Ukee appears in ‘The Best Real Estate Anywhere’ blog

Comments on Ukee, Sept. 25.

I spent the weekend in Ucluelet, hence the new photo on the masthead. It was great to get away.

I was surprised by the development there. On the one hand it seems as if the classic paving of paradise is well underway. On the other hand, if I compare it to Cabo San Lucas or Maui it doesn’t seem as if development is progressing as fast as I would have expected. There are still deer on the main streets. I couldn’t find a place to get bacon and eggs Monday morning, and ended up driving to Tofino.

Maybe I’m passing judgement too early; I’m sure that the influx of people next year will make a huge difference in infrastructure and services.  There are several closed businesses, including both traditional industrial suppliers as well as a few restaurants.  By next year there will be a new, huge, functioning hotel with cottages, and many more houses.  Over the next several years a Jack Nicklaus designed golf course will come on stream as well. If its all a success they’ll have to widen the surf highway.

Full post is here.

The post has almost 150 comments, so it must be widely read. Some interesting ones:

From VHB

Why would you expect Ucluelet to develop like [Cabo San Lucas or Maui]? It may be pretty there, but, um, have you noticed the climate differences?

From Jay

Ucluelet is a bit out there and it’s too bad people are developing it. Anything for the mighty $. It was nice to go through there and get away from people and yuppies etc. Now the people we try to get away from will be up there en mass. Great.

From foo

My opinion is and has always been that house prices are unsustainable. It’s very much like the bad old days of clearcutting and over-fishing. A few people were warning that you can’t just keep cutting down the forests and killing all the fish. Their concerns were pooh-poohed. Then one day there weren’t any fish. And all the good trees were gone. And everyone woke up to the fact that the days of raping the earth were over.

Similarly, right now, all the people with vested interests in selling high-priced properties, and seeing massive price appreciation keep saying that everything’s cool, there are lots of rich people to ensure prices will rise forever. One day the music is going to stop. It’s already stopped in the USA. In Spain. It’s stopping in Britain. It’s just a matter of time before it happens here.

Council schedules OCP ‘uh-oh’ review

In a surprise move, council has decided to initiate a review of Ucluelet’s Official Community Plan this fall, even though the mandatory five-year period for review won’t be up for another two years.

An anonymous commentator at the district office called the exercise “a standard UH-OH review — the usual procedure resorted to when council suddenly realizes it has gone too far, too fast.”

“An Uh-Oh review bolsters the sham that the community is in control of its own development,” the commentator said, “and also lets council off the hook to some extent by allowing them to claim they’re just doing what the community wants, as expressed in the OCP.”

Others, however, note that Ukee is now playing host to “a real estate and development speculation orgy more suited to an Internet gambling site than a community for people to live in.” They claim this revisiting of the OCP will be more of an OH-SHIT review, with council scrambling for damage control as the situation deteriorates.

A few are even claiming this will be a full-scale JESUS-H-CHRIST review, indicating a desperate, last-ditch effort to salvage some scraps of the community before it’s too late.

Cynical observers add that the OCP is effectively useless anyway, ever since council took it upon themselves to sweepingly rezone for the town’s build-out for the next 30 years, leaving little in the way of wiggle room for future councils. At any rate, they add, the OCP has proven to be a markedly flexible document, conveniently invoked for support when it agrees with what council wants to do, and downplayed as “just a guideline” when it doesn’t.

Stay tuned for commentary from the Tattler as the foolishness begins.

Peninsula Speedway ready for street racing

Peninsula Speedway has been resurfaced with new, high-speed asphalt, just in time for the hordes of mini-vans carrying overweight kids to school to save them the ten-minute walk.

The district has talked about paving this stretch of road since about the year 12 BW (Before Wyndansea), but has only now found the funding and the will to push it through.
Some say the paving was prompted by developer complaints that the potholes were damaging the suspensions of the 30 or 40 fully-loaded dump trucks per day that roar past the schools. Others claim that a high-end road was necessary now that the whole end of the peninsula is stuffed with high-end development.

Whatever the reason, the new surface (and its new lack of speed bumps) is being well utilized by all the pick-up trucks around town, which on average now arrive at their destinations 2.4 seconds quicker.

Ukee’s hard-core skateboarders are also praising the upgrade. The smooth pavement should reduce vibration injuries to the feet and legs caused by the extremely rough pavement around town, for which several skaters have been eagerly undergoing treatment at Bubbles’ Massage Hutte.