Douglas Express Bus Lane

As I would have expected, there are businesses complaining about the proposed express bus because it would remove their parking on the street.

Given the look and feel of Douglas from Herald st to Finlayson is a reasonably dead zone already for any sense of community and shopping. It strikes me as the best and highest use for this road is to move people in and out of town quickly. Adding the next stage of transit evolution in this region is the addition of ways to speed up the buses. This work on Douglas is the start.

From here we should look at things like the B line buses in Vancouver. I would argue that making the #14 and #26 into something like a B line bus.

The Douglas improvements will move the buses out of the core quicker, but then at Tillicum and Mackenzie there needs to more work done to get the buses through those intersections quicker.

There also needs to be some considerations of moving the buses faster out to the peninsula. There need to be bus queue jumper lanes at the lights. The #70 has to be much, much faster in getting into town. Ideally we should have an express bus down the Pat Bay Hwy from the ferry downtown. Ideally there would be a Sidney local bus that would connect to the Pat Bay Hwy Express Bus. Another local one in Central Saanich to do the same. Ideally this should shave time off of the trip, save 15 to 25 minutes off of the trip downtown.

Oh MY GOD! An ease up on parking tickets in the City????

Yes, it's true: City to ease up on parking tickets

Carolyn Heiman

Times Colonist

Wednesday, April 25, 2007

Downtown visitors are often warned about the city's overly diligent parking commissionaires, who seem to have a sixth sense when it comes to expired meters.

But soon it'll be the commissionaires giving the warnings.

The city will introduce a kinder, gentler parking strategy in four to six weeks, Mayor Alan Lowe told the annual general meeting of the Greater Victoria Chamber of Commerce yesterday. He said commissionaires will soon give warnings for minor infractions such as parking too far away from the curb or having a bumper extend a small amount over a yellow line.

Lowe's speech touched on a wide range of social and economic topics and he highlighted several multimillion-dollar projects fuelling the downtown economy. But it was the mention of a new parking strategy that brought loud applause.

"We want to show how parking-friendly we are," said Lowe. He added: "Our commissionaires do a great job. Sometimes they do too good a job."

Under the new strategy, which comes on the heels of a consultant studying the issue, Victoria will see more locations to buy parking cards and a possible change in long-term parking rates.

Last November, the mayor said the city would also consider extending the "grace period" from the time a meter expires until a ticket appears on your windshield.

© Times Colonist (Victoria) 2007

City Could be Best in Canada - Lowe

This is a headline from page B1 of the Times Colonist today. It is the sort of sentiment that I would like to see us adopt in the Capital Region.

His focus is just on the one municipal government - Victoria. I think that it would be better if the focus was on the whole region and we developed a more unified local government so that we can think bigger and not be weighed down by parochial concerns.

Here is the article:

------------------------------------------------------

City could be best in Canada: Lowe

Carolyn Heiman

Times Colonist

Wednesday, April 25, 2007

CREDIT: Darren Stone, Times Colonist Mayor Alan Lowe says businesses downtown need a safe environment to ply their trade.

Victoria has the potential to be the most livable city in Canada, Mayor Alan Lowe told business leaders yesterday.

"Some people think that Victoria's livability is slipping away," Lowe said. But although housing costs are high, and the city has social problems, he said, "We can turn the tide, and build on our legacy of livability."

In an upbeat presentation to members of the Greater Victoria Chamber of Commerce, Lowe outlined steps the city has taken to deal with social problems, but emphasized the city needs help from senior governments for a permanent solution.

While the city needs to show compassion for the most vulnerable, it also has to create "a downtown for everyone," he said: "a downtown that is productive and a downtown that will allow the businesses to have a safe environment to continue their trade."

Lowe challenged his audience to help find solutions for chronic problems -- such as the need for a new location for the needle exchange, now on the corner of Cormorant and Blanshard streets.

Earlier this year, AIDS Vancouver Island announced it wanted to relocate its service to a facility that included a courtyard to get drug addicts off the street. The announcement alarmed some neighbourhoods, which were concerned about attendant problems, such as discarded needles. The agency has since announced it doesn't have funds to move.

Lowe said a new location is still needed for the exchange, but promised the problems would not be moved from one neighbourhood to another. "The people hanging outside with their buggies ... we want them in an enclosed area so they won't be a burden and problem to the neighbourhood. We also want more social service providers to help them."

Lowe, who is also chairman of the Victoria Police Board, said plans are being finalized with the Victoria police to deal with repeat offenders in the area, although specifics won't be announced for a few more weeks.

Lowe outlined the city's four goals -- environmental sustainability, social and cultural development, economic vitality and service and staff excellence -- identified in its recently released 2007-2009 strategic plan

He noted the city will use performance measures to determine if those goals are met. He also showcased a number of projects the city is making headway on, including:

* Redevelopment of the north end of downtown.

* Establishment of a task force to examine redevelopment of the Belleville Terminal in the Inner Harbour.

* Improvements to Centennial Square, with the removal of a pod-like wing built on the back of the McPherson Theatre to create a larger festival space.

Lowe said sweeping changes to the square are still possible once the Centennial Square parkade is replaced with underground parking and a new facility -- possibly a new library.

© Times Colonist (Victoria) 2007

Vancouver Island Rail Corridor

Over the weekend the rail service had to be canceled because the tracks were not safe. The train would have had to run at 16 km/h instead of up to 64 km/h.

The weeds are dislodging the tracks and need to be removed. The Island Corridor Foundation has decided to use herbicides to do this. This would be the first time this has been done since 1989. I am sure that a lot of people are going to be very upset about this and demand that it not happen.

I am not sure how anyone thinks that this rail line will be able to make money and survive? The 223 km trip from Victoria to Courtney takes four and half hours. That is an average speed of 50 km/h. If I drive from Victoria to Courtney, I can drive that distance in 3 hours.

The train costs me $103 full fare or $60 discount fare for a return trip. The time and price compare not badly with the bus service - four to four and half hours and a fare of $77. But it does not compare well to using a car.

If I were to go with my partner and my three kids, the cost on Greyhound would be about $330 dollars and with Via about $380. In our own car, the costs are much lower - about $60 for fuel. We could rent a car for the weekend and have the cost be less - $250 for a three day weekend and then another $60 for fuel.

For this rail service to work, it has to be cheaper than the alternatives and reasonably fast. As it is now, the trip from Duncan to Victoria takes 90 minutes - too long for anyone to want to use it for if it were going in the correct direction, and it costs $32. Cobble Hill to Victoria is still 75 minutes. Langford into town takes 22 minutes. The trains are simply much too slow to be of interest.

I could see there being interest in the service if one could get from Cobble Hill to downtown in 45 minutes and the cost was $200 per month. But to accomplish this the Island Corridor Foundation would have to dramatically improve the rail line and add a lot more rolling stock. Rail rolling stock is about twice as expensive as buses to be able to carry a given number of people.

So, who will pay to make the E and N work well?

I find the proposal for a 21 storey condo development at the Crystal Court location very interesting. First off, it adds a fair number more people in the area - the density increases would improve services in the area. But even more so, the offer of 25 000 square feet for art gallery space is very interesting. The location is the right place to have this sort of exhibition space, at the core of the downtown tourism area.

Here is the article from the Victoria News

__________________________________

By Brennan Clarke News staff Apr 18 2007 Developer offers to pay for new art gallery exhibit space in return for “400 per cent” density lift Plans to replace Crystal Court Motel with a new art gallery at the foot of Blanshard Street include a 21-storey condominium tower, the project’s developer told members of the James Bay Environmental Association last week. Vancouver-based Westbank Properties is proposing a 25,000 square-foot art gallery at the Douglas Street end of the Crystal Court property and a high-rise of either 19 or 21 storeys closer to Blanshard Street. Under a partnership agreement with the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, Westbank is offering to fund a new $5 million exhibition space in return for a major increase in the density currently allowed on the site. Most of those who spoke at the James Bay Environmental Association’s annual general meeting Wednesday welcomed the idea of an art gallery on the site, but objected to the size of the accompanying condo tower. Marg Gardner, secretary-treasurer of the neighbourhood group, said each floor of the high rise represents a million-dollar profit for the developer and argued that “the gallery would be paid off by the time you got to the 10th or 11th storey.” Gardner also pointed out that the city’s bonus-density policy, which offers extra density in return for community “amenities,” does not apply to the Crystal Court property. Longtime James Bay resident Marc Pakenham said the recent spate of tall buildings approved by Victoria council is emboldening other developers to test the limits of city policy. “We’re now seeing the effect of the (Hudson) Bay site on Douglas Street spilling over into the James Bay neighbourhood,” Pakenham said. “This proposal is 400 per cent more than the allowable density. It is so out of character with the area that it’s in.” Crystal Court Motel, recently purchased by Westbank, is a stone’s throw from several of the city’s most important heritage and tourist attractions – Royal B.C. Museum, Mungo Martin long house, St. Ann’s Academy, Crystal Garden, the Fairmont Empress Hotel and the provincial legislature. “As presented we believe it will add to the congestion, with only one eastbound lane going down Belleville for access in and access out,” said Dallas Road resident Doug Craig. Consultant Peter Joyce said initial studies indicate only a “two to three per cent increase in traffic from the development.” Anthony Hartnell, owner of the Queen Victoria Hotel immediately behind Crystal Court, said Westbank officials have consulted him and agreed to erect a taller, thinner building that would minimize the impact on his hotel’s views of the Inner Harbour. “For me, a seven-storey squat is the worst possible design. That would block about 60 per cent of the views on the south side of my building,” Hartnell said. “What these developers have in mind is not perfect but it’s certainly 10 times better than the alternative.” Outside the meeting, Westbank president Bob Pearce said height of the tower is a result of factors such as rising construction costs and skyrocketing real estate prices. “It’s not about what you can get. It’s a function of what the marketplace dictates,” he said. bclarke@vicnews.com

Secondary suites

The average house in much of the Capital regional district is between $450 000 and $500 000. At this price it becomes very important for most people to be able to rent out part of the house to make ends meet. A $425 000 mortgage will cost about $2700 a month. Being able to collect a rent of $750 to $1000 a month makes it possible to own this sort of a house.

Problem is that most local governments do not allow them to exist in residential neighbourhoods.
View Royal is actively seeking out and getting rid of them. Most local governments turn a blind eye to them.

The blind eye leads to a problem - a lot of the secondary suites are basically not at all acceptable housing.

Meanwhile, the City of Victoria has announced that they will look at lifting the secondary suite restrictions. I am very glad that they are doing this. It would be nice to see all the secondary suites be recognized and be up to a basic standard of living space. It would also be nice to see higher density in neighbourhoods and for there to be more affordable housing. The higher density will reduce the footprint of the city on the planet - a good thing on many levels.

What would like to see after that is an easier process to strata a house into two units and basically allow this to happen in any neighbourhood.

Loss of the Archie Browning Arena

Esquimalt Council has voted to close the Archie Browning Arena in April 2008. This will be a major blow for ice sports recreation in the region. As it stands the Capital Regional District has fewer ice sheets per population than almost anywhere else in Canada. As is stands we have the following:

• Panorama - 2 ice sheets
• Pearkes - 2 ice sheets
• Bear Mountain - 2 ice sheets
• Archie Browning
• Naden
• Save of Foods
• Oak Bay
• Raquetclub/UVic
• Sooke
  

This is a total of 12 ice sheets for 310 000 people. Even that is not so bad, but when one looks at the core region - Victoria, Oak Bay, Saanich and Esquimalt - the number falls to 5, though one is not really available for public use (Save on Foods) and therefore we really have 4 ice sheets for 210 000 people. With the closure of Archie Browning, this falls to three.

Esquimalt is concerned about the costs of the arena complex - they are losing $700 000 a year and will have to shell out several million for a new roof shortly. I can understand there desire to improve their financial situation. To this end I would propose the following different options.

1) A core municipalities winter recreation coop. Have the four core municipal governments and UVic share all the costs and facilities. They would start with 4 ice sheets and need to replace one of them very soon (Archie Browning). The plan should be to grow this to 10 ice sheets over a moderate period of time. As it stands, the ice in Esquimalt and Oak Bay is heavily used by people from Victoria - really not a fair situation on the small municipalities. I would see the split be something like Saanich 1/3, Victoria 1/3, Oak Bay 1/9, Esquimalt 1/9 and UVic 1/9

2) A P3 to build and operate an arena complex in Esquimalt. First off, this should not be something like the Save on Foods deal, there are major management problems with the conflict of recreation versus concerts. I would see this facility having the following:

• A rink with seating for 1000 to 2000 and options to allow it to be used for concert like events
• A rink with very limited seating
• A rink that would normally be split into two smaller rinks but could be used as a single larger one
• An ice surface that would normally be for six curling sheets but could be converted to an international hockey surface

Why would anyone want to build and operate this? One would have to make the deal interesting enough to make a company bite.

With this many ice sheets, the daily traffic through the space would make it attractive to have several restaurants such as a better quality sports bar, a few fast food outlets, a Tim Hortons and a Starbucks. Most municipal arenas only have badly operated concession stands that barely make money. As a hockey dad, I know how much I could be spending there and that I do not. When a game or practice is around dinner time, I would likely buy a meal for myself and my son, but given the quality as it stands, I do not it. Early mornings I would spend a good chunk on good coffee.

The high use times are from 3:30 pm to 9:30pm weekdays and 7:30 am to 9:30 pm weekends. This is 58 high use hours a week. Lower use hours are 6am to 7:30 am and 9:30pm to 11:30pm on all days 24.5 hours a week. This is 72.5 hours a week. With different ice sheets available, different pricing could be in place for their use. With the facility I suggest, this would work out to about 250 hours a week. At an average of $120 per hour, this is a gross income of $27 500 for ice arena time - the curling should bring in another $15 000 a week.

Over a 30 week season, this brings in a gross income of about $1 275 000. I would think a private operator would look to getting another 20 weeks of use a year, but at lower incomes. If one assumes it drops off to 1/3 of the main season, this is $15 000 a week and a gross of another $300 000. Total income from the ice of about $1 575 000 a year.

With more ice sheets, the traffic would be enough to make it interesting to let space for retailers - first and foremost sports retailers. Many parents of kids in minor sports would be interested in being able to use their time to do other tasks while their children are practices - a place for a Curves or such.

If the developer is allowed to build more retail around the outside, is allowed to charge for parking, is allowed to build office or condo space above the space, or something else as part of the space.

Changing the scale of the operation at the site would bring in cost savings. Three sheets of ice have operating costs not much more than a single sheet.

A complex properly built in 2007 would be able to operate at a much lower cost than the existing facility. There have been advances in heating and cooling technology and building design and construction that would dramatically reduce the costs.

Shifting from staffing that is municipal recreation staff to private facility operation staff will also reduce costs through a different mind set in the staff.

Traffic Patterns in Victoria - Bay and Tyee

I often have to go over the Bay Street or Point Ellice Bridge. At the corner of Bay and Tyee I can see all the new office buildings going up - only a few short years ago there were none there, now there is one done and occupied, a second almost finished and two more underway.

The traffic at the corner of Bay and Tyee has become very busy and is rapidly approaching gridlock. There is only one travel lane in all direction.

It is not uncommon to be stopped on the Victoria side of the bridge while waiting to go through the light.

Bay is then held up at Bridge Street - the back up runs almost all the way through to Tyee. Bridge is also backing up.

The traffic into and out of the Vic West Shopping Centre is also not great. The light at Wilson and Tyee keeps portions of the parking lot gridlocked.

People are living in all the condos in Vic West and in many cases working farther away - out at UVic, Royal Roads, Viatec, Keating X road and elsewhere. The development has spawned a lot of reverse commuters.

With the new office buildings in the area and new Railyards, I predict that the Tyee/Bay intersection will come to a grinding halt by the end fall of this year.

Tea for Two redux

Just quickly, Nick Redding (whom I know from sitting on a board with) had a good letter in today's Times Colonist about the Tea Room proposal. He referenced how London has dealt with the Thames Waterfront and made it an asset. He is very much correct in this. In fact, Victoria has managed to wildly under preform when it comes to use of its waterfront. A great asset, just very little use.

Tea for Two

The building at the end of Cook Street at Dallas road, Dashwood Manor, applied to council to be able to offer tea to the people walking in the neighbourhood.

Victoria City Council turned it down because if they approved the tea room idea, the place would also be able to be a full service restaurant.

It strikes me that there is a fair amount of MIBYism going on this neighbourhood. What is fundamentally wrong with a restaurant in this location? Not that this is what the owners want to do. The Cook Street village area needs more people and more commercial/retail. Ideally that commercial/retail would flow southwards to the water from the current location.

Anchoring the end of the street with a tea room would be a great start. With cafe at the breakwater and the tea room at Cook and Dallas, you make it that much more inviting for people to walk along there. More walking is good for more fitness.

The core of the Cook Street village needs more condos - decent ones that offer street front retail operations and not the dead lawn space that so many of the apartments further north on the street have. Adding 2000 to 4000 people into the neighbourhood would improve local stores. increase demand for transit, and achieve a reduction of the footprint of the city.

Burnside - Gorge many years ago

I was cruising through the BC Archives files and found some interesting pictures of my neighbourhood from years gone by.

There was a time when the Gorge as far as Selkirk Water was a working part of the harbour. Yes there is still some use of the area, but a lot less and dropping all the time. Budget Steel I presume will be pushed out in the near future.

Molly's BBQ - the building still stands towards the end of Gorge Road close to Admirals

This next one is Gorge rd to the east of Harriet - amazing how barren the land was left.

The last is on Burnside not very far at all from where I live now. If I were to guess, I think this is at Orillia and Burnside

Security checks on BC Ferries

I am not sure where to even begin with this. The idea is fundamentally stupid. There is no way to effectively run the ferry service and do any degree of reasonable search of people, cars and trucks as they go onto the ferry.

At an airport the screening is a long process. For plans you need to screen a lot less people and a lot less things. One to two bags per person is all that needs to looked - a total for typical international flight of 300 people and 300 bags

How does any propose to search 300 vehicles and up to 1500 people in anything approaching a reasonable time? Because of the schedule, it would have to be done in the 40 minutes the ferries are loading and unloading. Maybe you could be processing all the time, but that still means no more than one hour to process a full ship load of people and vehicles. The staffing needs of BC Ferries will go through the roof and so will the fares.

Are you going search each car? Very few vehicles crossing between Canada and the US are searched, would the ferries have higher security than the border does?

If one had to be at the ferry one hour early than now, you effectively have changed the round trip ferry time from 4.5 hours to 6.5 hours.

Since the vehicles will have to be there earlier, there will be a lot more vehicles in the terminal parking lots and therefore the parking lots will have to be even larger. This will be ok at Duke Point and Tsawwassen, Swartz bay will have once again blast and rebuild further out, but Horseshoe Bay and Departure Bay have no place to add more vehicles.

The fares have risen rather quickly over the last few years and are high enough now to start deterring people from traveling to and from the island. A few years ago a car and driver could cross to the lower mainland and back for about $60, now it is $100. You can fly from harbour to harbour for $180 to $220 return, a price that has not changed much over the last ten years.

When you fly, you can be from my house to an office in downtown Vancouver in 90 minutes without any difficulties. With the ferry it has taken me about 3.5 hours, with the security check it will add another hour. The plane will save me three hours instead of two and the price difference is only about $50 instead of $70. Before I would had to have earned more than $35 per hour to make the plane worthwhile, with the security check it will drop to $17 per hour.

The Malahat and rail based transit

The south end of Vancouver Island has its interesting barrier in the form of the Malahat. It is not an insurmountable barrier, but changes to the highway will never be cheap and the existing road is effectively close to capacity. The route suffers from ongoing problems when there is an accident and the highway is blocked.

In my opinion, the biggest problem is how to manage the highway through Goldstream park. The park is a wonderful quasi wilderness close to town. The highway is a major intrusion as is in the park. If it were to be four laned, the park would effectively be destroyed.

I personally think we can live with the existing Malahat, but there is a demand for better access from the Cowichan valley to Victoria for the ever increasing numbers of commuters. If one were to improve the Malahat, this would increase the number of commuters. These commuters would further gum up the roads close into to town. The commuters would add more CO2 emissions and air pollution.

This leads to transit being proposed as an option. That would either be via bus or via rail. Neither option is reasonable.

Bus:
This would be a long distance bus commute. If one had a bus from Duncan to Victoria with limited stops, odds are the commute would take about 75 to 90 minutes if one did not need to transfer. The fare would have to be about $6 each way to achieve a 50% cost recovery from the transit users. A monthly bus pass would cost about $220 to $250.

I suspect the buses would suffer from a lot of deadheading - going almost empty in one direction of the trip. If this is the case, it is not unreasonable to assume that the marginal cost per rider would be higher.

What about the existing private bus service on the route? Typically BC transit has not tried to put private bus services out of business - witness the #70 in Victoria, it could easily compete with the buses on the ferry, but it is made into a peninsula milk run when most of the passengers are ferry related. BC Transit also choses not to run a quick and consistent bus service to the Airport, but my issues with BC Transit are for another time.

It might be worth BC Transit trying a trial of a bus service from Duncan to Victoria and seeing how much it would cost and how many people would use it.

Rail:
People are in love with rail, but are not willing to pay for it or use it.

I lived in Lillooet for years and we only had rail access to any other location as a mode of publicly available transit. In the 9 years I lived there, I liked to try and make use of the BC Rail service. The timing was not great for my needs, it dropped me in an industrial part of North Vancouver after dinner time and left very early the next day. The cost went up and up to such a point where it was a lot cheaper to drive a car than take the train.

Most times I was one of less than a dozen people using the train from Lillooet to North Van. People simply did not use the service. And the BC Rail service was the most used passenger rail service in BC other than the Skytrain and Westcoast express.

The service was canceled because it was simply prohibitively expensive and not very flexible. Still there was a huge hue and cry when it slated to be canceled.

On Vancouver Island there is a passenger rail service, one that is effectively not used by anyone. But people are fighting to keep it in place. There is the Island Corridor Foundation that is taken over the rail line with the intention of operating a passenger rail service on it.

The cost of rail rolling stock costs 100% to 300% more than the same capacity of buses. The cost of maintaining the track is also an expense that has to be covered. What people do not seem to understand is that passenger rail service is wildly expensive.

The other thing people forget is that the existing rail line is not designed for anything other than very slow trains. For the trains to be able to act as a reasonable commuter service, there would have to a dramatic upgrade of the line all from Duncan to Victoria. Many level crossings would have to go, many tight corners would have to be removed and some sort of effective terminus would have to be built in Victoria.

Normally light rail transit needs a city with enough density of population to make it worthwhile. Victoria is still a very long way off to make rail an option that makes any sense to financially.

The offer on the house

We made our offer on this house. We offered $410 000 - which is in my opinion what it is worth in this market. The owner rejected the offer out of hand and said he was insulted and would only entertain offers over $450 000.

I sit on the property assessment review panel for Greater Victoria, specifically the panel that deals with residential properties. We just finished the 2007 hearings. I mention this because it gives me a very detailed knowledge of the value of houses in Victoria. I can judge the state impact of the state and condition, the impact of location, the orientation of the house on the lot and take into account the market trends.

The house is on a busy road, it needs work, quite a bit of work (the bones look to be in good condition, but it is rough otherwise), it was assessed at $385 000 on July 1 2006. A better house sold for $424 000 last month. Everything says $410 000 is the fair price.

So we must continue to look in the market. If it is still available in a month, we will offer again.

Oldest house in Victoria

I am curious what the oldest house in Victoria is? By this I mean a house that still in use and not one of the museum type ones like Helmcken house etc.....


Here is what I have found:

John Tod House
John Tod was born in Scotland and emigrated to Canada in 1811 where he rose to the position of chief fur trader with the Hudson's Bay Company. His house, located at 2564 Heron Street, is western Canada’s oldest house, completed in 1851. Tod built the house from local heavy timber, with pegged and dovetailed construction rare to the area. Since 1929 owners of the house have complained of ghostly activities and unexplained events. Rumours abounded of secret tunnels dug from the house to Oak Bay coves for the purposes of smuggling contraband – but the tunnels have yet to be discovered.

4139 Lambrick Way (ca. 1859) Captain Charles and Grace Dodd

This is the oldest house still standing in Saanich and was originally situated at 1710 Kenmore Road. It was built for the Dodds as a country home. Dodd, a servant of the Hudson's Bay Company, came to the Coast in 1836 on the paddle wheeler S.S. Beaver. He was promoted to master of the Beaver and later the Labouchere. He eventually became Chief Factor for the northwest coast, but died shortly afterwards on June 2, 1860. In accordance with Dodd's will, Roderick Finlayson and William Fraser Tolmie were appointed Trustees of his estate. A handsome tabletop monument over Dodd's grave still stands in Pioneer Square in Victoria.

This simple, one-storey, cedar-shingled house is country Georgian in style. The interior, with its twelve-foot ceilings, is lined in redwood. In 1978 the house was moved from its original location at the corner of Kenmore Road and Torquay Drive by developer Charles Van Veen, who wished to subdivide the property where it stood.

From a restaurant review
A restaurant I have tried, Four Mile Roadhouse (said to be haunted), is a pleasant stop if you are on the way west of Victoria (perhaps to visit the gardens at Royal Roads or drive to the Sooke area) or returning to town. It's located on a grubby road, the old highway from Victoria out to Colwood, but don't let that put you off. It's the fourth oldest house in Victoria's history - obviously modified over the years.

The house was built by a Peter Calvert from Scotland, who sailed as an indentured servant of the Hudson's Bay Co. He worked for them for five years. On the voyage over to Victoria he fell in love and after his service was over, married. He bought a six-acre parcel of land beside the original highway that the stagecoaches traversed. He decided to open a roadhouse and start a staging service. He had a parrot in a tree outside the Four Mile House (the name comes from its location along the highway), and the parrot was reported to whistle at the horses and call out 'whoa'.

In the late 40's the Four Mile House was translated into a dine and dance place with a brothel upstairs for sailors. Closed down and neglected until 1979, the building was renovated and reopened as the present restaurant and lounge - totally respectable now, of course. The food is inexpensive for the amount served, but not remarkable.

Offer is on the house

So we submitted an offer on the house today - I am stunned at how much we are willing to consider for a house, but it makes sense and it saves us money.

The house is almost at the highest point on the ridge between the Colquitz and Cecilia Creek watersheds. Long term I would like to make a dormer on either the south or east sides - there should be a small view of downtown and maybe even the San Juans.