The OCP is intended to be a guidance document for the future of the city, based on community values

Nelson City Council adopted a new Official Community Plan at its Sept. 9 meeting, with one change to the draft plan.

The change was a response to public feedback about the housing and commercial project proposed by Hallō Properties for 17.5-acres of land it purchased in 2024 from the Granite Pointe Golf Club. The company’s promotional material envisioned expensive housing and a high-end commercial hub at the location.

Opponents of the project said it would create an expensive resort on scarce land in a town with an affordable housing crisis. It would undermine Nelson’s unique lifestyle, raise housing prices, and drain vitality from Baker Street, they said.

At the public hearing on the OCP before the council meeting, one of the 15 presenters said she is a former resident of Canmore, Alta., where she said expensive developments have ruined the reasons she and others moved there in the first place. She feared the same fate for Nelson.

Another presenter, a 20-year resident of upper Rosemont, said everyone in her neighbourhood is against the development. 

All of the presenters were there to speak against the golf course development. Council also received just under 100 letters in the comment period leading up to the public hearing. All of the letters asked council to amend the OCP to disallow the development. Almost all of the letters were signatures on an identical form letter.

Members of council grappled with this opposition in the meeting, eventually changing one paragraph in section 4.9 of the draft OCP that states the intention of the document related to the golf course.

Previously, the paragraph said the city should “encourage the long-term viability of the golf course by encouraging compatible redevelopment of the site in efforts to encourage a golf-oriented community that is highly integrated into the city.” That paragraph was transferred directly from the 2013 version of the OCP.

The replacement paragraph will read: “Support the long-term vitality of the Rosemont neighbourhood by encouraging redevelopment of all the Granite Point redevelopment land use designation to foster a healthy and diverse community.”

“It’s a slight shift in tone, but I think it’s important,” said Councillor Rik Logtenberg, who proposed the amendment. He said the changed wording signals a different intention for the development at the golf course.

An OCP is a long-term community vision that reflects community values, hence the extensive public consultation the city has been doing over the past two years preparing to write the new version, using in-person and online tools and events.

The provincial government requires every municipality to have an OCP and to renew it every 10 years. Nelson’s plan can be found at https://www.nelson2050.ca/.

The rest of golf course lands section in the OCP (not changed by council on Sept. 9) envisions 300 housing units, green building methods, a diversity of housing types, and active transportation routes (biking and walking) throughout the neighbourhood.

It also allows for “a commercial hub (village centre) to include a retail and studio centre that supports Nelson’s artisan community and the neighbourhood of Rosemont. This commercial hub will be complimentary to Baker Street as the commercial spine of the city.”

But since Hallō’s purchase of the land, many locals have feared something not quite as rustic because of Hallō’s liberal use of words like “spa” and “boutique hotel” in its promotional material.

What comes next

Before Hallō Nelson bought the land, the golf club asked council to rezone part of it for 24 units of housing, changing the land use for those lots only from park to residential. Council voted in favour of the rezoning.

The club then sold the entire 17.5 acres land to Hallō Properties, run by real estate developers Graham Kwan and Farhad Ebrahimi. Their published plan for the properties signalled a high-end resort rather than a housing development. At that point, and to this day, only a fraction of the purchased land – the part where the 24 units are planned – has been rezoned from park to residential.

For the rest of the  purchased land to be rezoned, including the proposed town centre, the company will have to come back to council and request it.

Mayor Janice Morrison and city manager Kevin Cormack both pointed out at the Sept. 9 meeting that council will have a lot of discretion at the zoning hearing (and in its subsequent development permit process) to specify what kinds of development it wants. They said this would have been true even without Logtenberg’s amendment.

Cormack said council will also have plenty of control over any commercial development.

“Council controls that,” he said, “so we can decide whether it’s just a corner store or what type of commercial development it will be. The developer has put a vision out there that is very far from a done deal, and we have a lot of tools.”

As for the 24 housing units on the already-rezoned part of the property, construction has not started. Before that can happen the company must apply to the city for a development permit.

Zoning says what can be built (land use, density, height) and development permits say how it can be built (design, siting, landscaping, environmental protection). Zoning changes are decided by council, while development permits are decided by city planners.

At the Sept. 9 meeting, in a session separate from the OCP adoption, council passed a new group of policies about development permits.

The new policies give council enhanced control over developments in terms of how they will affect the natural environment, transportation, city infrastructure, economic development, social development, heritage, climate action and hazard conditions.