(by Newsdesk)
Developer Klaus Fuerniss hopes to start construction of the George Hotel and Residences in May, he said in a recent phone conversation with a Gibsons resident. “I’m waiting for the Town to do its due diligence,” he said. “It’s up to them.”
The approval process is not complete. Not all development permits, agreements, and bylaws are yet in place. As a result, Fuerniss has not been able to apply for building permits.
However, town staff expects that it will not be long before the bulldozers start up. “The George Hotel hopes to be starting the construction soon, so if all goes well the permits listed below will be finalised in the next couple of months,” Andre Boel, director of planning at the Town of Gibsons, confirmed in an email this week.
“There are no set dates because not all the relevant information is available yet.”
The following permits, agreements, and bylaws are still in the works.
** The geotechnical hazards and aquifer protection permit has not been issued
On October 6, 2015, Klaus and Monika Fuerniss and the Town of Gibsons concluded a Development Agreement, a legal contract that spells out what Fuerniss has to do to get approval for the development. One of the requirements is a peer review of the geotechnical hazards and an aquifer protection investigation.
“The reports for this permit are being finalised and the peer review is underway,” Boel wrote in his emai. “Staff has not issued the permit yet. Council will be informed at one of their public meetings once the permit is ready for issuance and that’s also when the materials will be made available to the public.”
** The Development Permit for Environmentally Sensitive Areas has not been issued
Council has not yet approved this permit, Boel wrote. “The applicant is still working on the necessary materials and staff is reviewing it.”
The Ministry of Environment does not get involved with the development permit, Boel wrote, but it has “a separate role in overseeing and reviewing the site contamination remediation under its Contaminated Site Regulation.”
Simply said, the ministry requires that Fuerniss clean up contamination at the Hyak Marine site before he can get a development permit. The George residences are to be built on top of the contaminated site. Driving pilings into the ocean floor for the restaurant could stir up toxic contamination.
For about sixty years, Hyak Marine Services has been a place for boat maintenance. Boats have routinely been treated with anti-fouling paint containing a highly toxic substance called tributyltin (TBT).
In 2013, Gibsons resident Dr. Andre Sobolewski, environmentalist, water treatment specialist, and president of Clear Coast Consulting, Inc., tested sediment near the site for TBT. Because he could not access the actual Hyak Marine site, owned by Fuerniss, Sobolewski took samples as close as he could, on public land at the high tide mark.
His findings were alarming. Of the five samples, four contained TBT. Two of them had levels that were 20 to 35 times higher than the safety standards in Washington state.
“This is not trivial,” Sobolewski said recently. “Tributyltin is really nasty. It is much more toxic than mercury. In fact, it is among the most toxic substances in the world.”
Sobolewski was so worried that in 2013 he notified the Town of Gibsons and the Ministry of Environment. The town was not interested, he said. Initially, the ministry was not too concerned either. But in the past few months, the ministry has acknowledged his concerns, Sobolewski said. It has told Keystone Ltd., Fuerniss’ environmental consulting firm, that special attention must be paid to tributyltin at the site.
A recent email from Vincent Hanemayer, Senior Contaminated Sites Officer of the Ministry of Environment, to a Gibsons resident confirms this requirement.
“The environmental consultant is aware that tributyltin is present in the sediments along with other contaminants and [this] will have to be addressed during site remediation,” Hanemayer wrote.
“We need to be very watchful,” Sobolewski said. “Has the consultant sampled the mussels near the site, the plants? Is he going to? The herring are spawning. Does TBT have an impact on the spawn? What about the salmon? This is important for our community.”
In April 2016 Fuerniss had the Hyak site dismantled and decommissioned. Under the BC Environmental Management Act and the BC Contaminated Sites Regulations, he was required to file a site profile within ten days after the start of the activities.
He did not do so. Instead, Fuerniss filed the site profile in December 2016. The profile mentions high-risk levels of copper and mercury.
But the forms were filled out in a curious way, as documents obtained by The Coast Clarion show. One of the questions was whether “the cleaning of or repair of parts of boats, ships or barges” had ever occurred at the site. Consultancy firm Keystone Ltd. checked the “No” box.
That is not correct, says Gibsons resident John Roper, who moored a sailboat in Gibsons Marina for 32 years until 2016. According to him, boat maintenance with tributyltin has been carried out at the Hyak site for years. “We have performed some of these activities on our own boat and observed these activities performed by other boat owners while at Hyak (Marine Services).”
Also, a letter from the Department of Fisheries and Oceans shows that Hyak Marine operated as a boat repair facility until at least 2008.
The use of tributyltin was banned in 2008.
After a site profile has been filed—in Fuerniss’s case in December 2016—a developer has 90 days to finish remediation work.
However, it is not clear whether the work has started. In the middle of March 2017, Hanemayer wrote in an email to a Gibsons resident: “At this time we have not received a notice of commencement of independent remediation for the project. As I understand from talking to the environmental consultant for the client, the site owner is awaiting further approvals from the town prior to starting remediation and site development. I have been advised that some site preparation has taken place.”
But according to director of planning Boel, the town is waiting for the developer. As he stated in his email: “Fuerniss is still working on the necessary materials and staff is reviewing it.”
After the site remediation is completed, Fuerniss must apply to the Ministry of Environment for a Certificate of Compliance that the site has been properly cleaned up. The town requires the certificate for the development permit.
It is not known when an application for the Environmentally Sensitive Area development permit will go to Council for approval.
**The Servicing Agreement is not yet in place
Fuerniss still needs to conclude the Servicing Agreement, which spells out the design and the cost for the installation and improvement of municipal infrastructure such as water, stormwater, sanitary, and road infrastructure for the development, Boel wrote.
In the Development Agreement of October 6, 2015, Fuerniss pledged to pay the Town for the upgrades to these services, but there was no mention of specific dollar amounts.
An upgrade to the Prowse Road sewage lift station is also required. Fuerniss’ contribution has not yet been determined.
“The applicant is still working on the design drawings. No agreement has been prepared,” Boel wrote recently.
**Winn Road: Fuerniss still needs a Land Exchange Agreement
For the development, Fuerniss needs Winn Road. The buildings will sit on top of the present location of Winn Road; a parkade will be constructed underneath the surface.
According to the Development Agreement, Winn Road will be moved. Fuerniss will provide a pedestrian public plaza between the hotel and the condo tower north of the present location of Winn Road.
For an appraised value of $425,000, he will acquire the subsurface air parcel for parking. The town will own the plaza as a pedestrian walkway. Fuerniss will have to pay for upkeep and maintenance.
In order for the town to close Winn Road, Fuerniss and the town need a Land Exchange Agreement.
The agreement is not yet in place. ”[It is] under preparation,” Boel wrote in his recent email. “Once it is finalised it will be reviewed and considered by Council before the Town may sign it.”
There is no mention of a date.
**Winn Road: Fuerniss still needs a Road Closure Bylaw
By law, public input is required before a road may be permanently closed to vehicles.
On March 2, 2016, Gibsons resident Marcia Timbres, who uses Winn Road almost daily to walk to the ocean or to drive there to launch her kayak, filed a petition with the Supreme Court of B.C.
“Winn Road provides public access to the ocean and selling it off [or giving it away to the developer] must not be done without extensive public input,” Timbres said. “There was never any public process for Winn Road. Instead, the Town just lumped it into the rezoning application and left the citizens completely in the dark. Gibsonites were never told how our public road and beach access would be dealt with if the hotel development went ahead.”
In response to this petition to the court, director of planning Andre Boel wrote in a letter to Timbres’ lawyer (May 6, 2016) that the town was ready to start with a proper legal process to close Winn Road. The process would start sometime between May and July 2016.
In the fall of 2016, the Town again stated such a process would take place.
In his recent email, Boel no longer mentions a date. “[It is] under preparation. The process through Council and the required public notification has not yet started,” he wrote.
Several Gibsons residents have sought legal advice to examine the approval process for the George Hotel and Residences.
Shoal Bay Properties, a company that owns six lots between the George development and Gibsons Marina, has filed a lawsuit against the town, the provincial government, and Gibsons Marina Hotel Inc. The company wants private moorage for future condos and claims it has a right to access to deep water. Potentially, Fuerniss could lose easy access from the marina to the George hotel and its restaurant. The first trial date is set for April 9, 2018.
Excellently written and very much appreciated. Thanks for a job well done. Further, I think that you need to explain the capcha thing for us older folks not familiar with what the little numbers game means at the end of the i.d. I had to research to find out what was going on with this.
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Thanks for the update. Good work. Makes me wonder if it is possible that Klaus Fuerniss is running out of money and dealing with unhappy investors. Gee, why does that put a smile on my face?
To add to the background here, it has been just over three years since the current town planner rejected the george hotel project in a March 1, 2014 letter (produced via a Freedom of Information request) because it ran roughshod over the town’s Official Community Plan. Then,magically, he reversed himself a week later and officially accepted the development permit application. All without the knowledge of the town’s Councillors. Of special note, democratically speaking, is that there has never been an official explanation for the reversal.
The erosion of our democracies doesn’t just occur at the national level, but at our own local levels as well. Government behind closed doors sucks.
Thank You The Coast Clarion for providing factual information about the George and the Town of Gibsons and helping citizens exercise their democratic rights!
It clearly shows how the Town is more interested in development at any cost than protecting our natural assets and the interests of our community.
We are in deep need of a council and mayor that foster development that is environmentally, socially, and culturally appropriate to our Town and that improves our long term resilience to the next financial crisis, climate change, food shortage, etc.
Democracy starts at the local level!
Thanks for all the work and digging – and the very reasonable, objective review of the process. Your article very fairly gives the Planner much opportunity to comment, and the public has much interest and right to know what’s going on. We don’t ofte get this kind of depth in other local publications.
I also like your info on other developments happening locally. Finally, the restaurant news is good to know about too – Maybe I’ll even write about things happening way out here in Roberts Creek.
During the 70’s we owned a commercial fish boat “Fair Seas” in the Gibsons harbour. We brought it up on the Hyack marine ways where I personally, scrapped old antifouling paint off which was left on the ground, never cleaned up . And then applied new antifouling paint , dropping and spilling on the ground. So a statement such that “no cleaning of boats or ships” does not appear to be correct
Seems like a fine April Fool’s joke, with a lot of one-sided opinions. I just hope the George can be built soon so we can move on to the next project. If an election occurred today, people would still vote against the Luddites.
I am glad at least one response leans towards supporting the kind of development that might keep Gibsons from becoming a ghost town. I want to grow older (I am already old) here with employment opportunities for the families of the caregivers I will need. Only growth will provide that.
It seems you have missed the point that based on FACTS provided by the Town of Gibsons and the BC Government, the George proponent is nowhere near getting a development permit for this project.
The spread of toxic contamination into the environment could create major liabilities for investors, potential buyers of the George condos and taxpayers.
Regardless of the George promo material and spin doctoring, shovels must not hit the ground until all of the serious technical issues are properly addressed.
Of course the Hyak Marine Site has been used to scrape off anti-fouling paint from boats, as have hundreds of thousands of other sites around the world. EVERY vessel on salt water oceans has anti-fouling paint on their bottoms, including BC ferries. Being an active ingredient, it has a ‘best by’ date, and needs to be renewed every two to three years. Cleaning up the Hyak Site is totally independent from ‘The George’ development. Even if Klaus Fuerniss ‘only’ wanted to build condos on the present site, he would still have to clean up the site. In the grand scheme of things, it’s just adding to the cost, not a ‘stopper.’