2015 Retro Concert at Sun Peaks.
Image Credit: Sun Peaks via Facebook
August 12, 2016 - 8:30 PM
SUN PEAKS - As the village grows, Sun Peaks administration is looking at creating a potential housing authority to help employees find and keep homes.
With a hot housing market across B.C., including the ski resort village Sun Peaks Mayor Al Raine says municipality staff are looking at a housing authority similar to Whistler's to help employees working in Sun Peaks live near their job.
“If you want to be a quality resort you need quality employees and you need to make it easy to live in the resort,” he says.
While the plan is in early stages, he says it would likely hold housing outside of the general market to make sure it is affordable for employees. Meetings have already been held to discuss the idea and it may become a reality in early 2017.
One project that will help provide new homes in the village may be a proposed townhouse development near the Kookaburra Lodge just east the village’s core. The project still has to go before a public hearing for rezoning, Raine says, which should happen in Sepetember.
“It’s either 22 or 24 units,” he says.
While the townhouse project is in the application stage, Raine says he’s heard other developers are interested in Sun Peaks as the site of a new project.
Keeping the townhouses close to the village centre is important to the community plan, with a focus on walkability and biking. The hope is there won’t be as much of a reliance on cars in the village, or a complicated transit system in the future as the village grows. Rain says growth is the goal to make public projects more affordable.
“We need more taxpayers,” he says.
Some public projects will be a reality soon. Work on the future site of the Sun Peaks health centre has begun, with excavation crews clearing the land this week. Once that’s done the equipment will be moved to the site of a future ice rink to flatten it out next week. The rink is expected open first, sometime in November, while the health centre should be able to take patients in late February.
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News from © iNFOnews, 2016