Lake Okanagan Resort condo owners also face uncertain future
The destruction of Lake Okanagan Resort means more than just the loss of vacation weeks for timeshare owners.
There are five strata councils representing owners of condo units at the resort who are just as unsure about their futures after losing their homes.
“We have had no information from anyone on what the plans are,” Bill Jack told iNFOnews.ca. “I enjoyed living at Lake Okanagan Resort. Many beautiful memories.”
He bought a condo there nine years ago and is a member of Strata 520 but not on the council board. Nor, he says, are any other residents at the resort on the board.
“When we had a (strata council) meeting, we wanted to have a whole bunch of members who owned out there on the board but, the main (resort) owners own 49% of the votes,” Jack said. “When it came down to the vote to try to get us on council, we had to have at least 15 people and nobody knows each other and they wouldn’t allow us to talk and get to know each other before we could vote.”
There is no list available to strata members of who is in the strata so they are not able to connect with each others or to people in other stratas at the resort.
It’s unclear how many people are affected but 150 units were destroyed by the McDougall Creek Wildfire in August.
There are an estimated 2,000 timeshare owners. Many were sent emails and/or letters giving them until Nov. 30 to vote on whether to give up their time shares or face unspecified rebuilding costs.
Some of them, however, contacted iNFOnews.ca late last week, just before the deadline, to say they had yet to receive that notice.
READ MORE: Lake Okanagan Resort timeshare owners at risk of getting the boot with no compensation or notice
The Strata 520 owners have started their own Facebook Group but it’s a closed group.
Jack said an online strata meeting has been called for Dec. 16 and provided contact information for the strata manager, Rob Arbo, who is vice-president of Insight Strata Services in Kelowna.
Arbo told iNFOnews.ca that he’s not authorized to speak on behalf of the strata and asked for questions to be submitted by email. He did not respond to those questions by publication time.
Jack has heard rumours that Lake Okanagan Resort plans to build a hotel on the site but no one from the resort's ownership has responded to requests from iNFOnews.ca for an interview.
“If they’re thinking of building a hotel and they’re saying we don’t even have enough money in the strata to rebuild our places, there’s something wrong there,” Jack said. “It’s like they’ve walked away from the whole thing. They have all the say in the world. We don’t have an ounce of support. It’s terrible.”
READ MORE: Trying to make Lake Okanagan Resort exciting again
The resort was bought in 2014 by a Chinese company from Northwynd Resort Properties for a reported $9.1 million.
Since then there have been continued concerns about a lack of maintenance and a deterioration of the site.
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