Friday, March 19, 2010

Royal Bay Colwood

The Royal Bay development in Colwood will eventually cover over former gravel pit in Colwood. When built out the development will have 2800 houses. The first areas have been completed



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I find the area neat, clean, and utterly uninspiring. The neighbourhood looks and feels like the world Malvina Reyonlds talks about in her song Little Boxes. It is not really different than most new developments which depresses me. There is nothing organic about how the community will arise in this area.

The houses look like they are all of the sort of design that is larger than needed and will feel empty and alienating. This goes along with a neighbourhood that feels alienating.

Long term the developers talked of having schools and commercial areas within the development, but I am not sure that this will happen. Specifically in the case of the commercial development I do not see how there will be enough density in the area to support retails businesses.

A bigger concern I have about this development is that it is being constructed in an area that would have made for a perfect location to an industrial park after the gravel pit is done. The land is flat, it is dug down to bedrock, it has no close neighbours to it and it would help deal with the shortage of industrial lands in the region.


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We do need the houses to be built as we need about 1000 to 1500 new housing units each year just to keep pace with the demand. We really need 2000 units a year for the next decade to drive the price of housing down. A basic condo should start at $100,000 a year and a basic 1500 sq ft house should start at $250,000.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Long time resident of Colwood/Metchosin here, the closest shopping for anything besides doughnuts to metchosin and most of colwood is in Langford, and the schools in West Shore are very over populated, and ever growing. Industrial park would be a good idea, except for all the beautiful beach it would be making unnaccesible. About time we got that gravel pit out, now maybe the beach can get back to where Nature intended it to be...

Anonymous said...

2800 Houses, the run off from the roads and lawnsin this development will go into the ocean right beside the Esquimalt Lagoon bird sanctuary. What plans are there for this toxic runoff besides letting it flow directly into the ocean?

Shouldn't the developers wait until there is a high speed rail for those 2800 home owners who will commute to Victoria?

Bernard said...

There are a lot of roads and houses already between the development and the lagoon. The core of the land may also drain towards where the loading dock was