The town’s purchase of Eaglecrest Golf Club is a central issue for voters, many of whom attended a standing-room-only all-candidates meeting on Monday.
Surveying the crowd squeezed into the Qualicum Beach Civic Centre on Monday night, Kevin Monahan announced that the event would “not focus on the purchase of Eaglecrest Golf Course.”
The quip by the president of the Qualicum Beach Residents Association generated a titter from the approximately 650 people at the standing-room-only all-candidates meeting, hosted by the association.
Monahan said in a later interview that the huge turnout was likely due to Eaglecrest being a central issue for voters this municipal election.
The purchase of the 105-acre golf course by the Town of Qualicum Beach for $8.5 million in November of 2025 has been a point of contention for many residents of the community of about 9,300 people.
It will allow for residential development, including seniors housing of up to five storeys, in the Eaglecrest neighbourhood, on the eastern side of Qualicum Beach. Older residents make up more than half the population in Qualicum Beach, where the median age is 67.5, according to Statistics Canada census data.
The Eaglecrest neighbourhood currently consists mainly of single-family homes, a few buildings that are four storeys and one that is five storeys.
So far, the community is split on whether the golf course purchase was a good idea, Monahan said. “I think there’s a much larger dissatisfaction with the fact that a lot of programs have been pushed down the road because of the Eaglecrest purchase,” he said. “And some people might think it’s unfortunate.”
That was clear in many candidates’ answers to questions posed on Monday night.
“This town has kind of lost its focus,” said mayoral candidate and former MLA Adam Walker, in response to a question about the town’s housing priorities for the next five to 10 years.
Walker pointed to council’s decision last October to reject a proposed three-storey, 125-unit independent and assisted long-term care living facility described as “too imposing” by a councillor who voted against it.
“They turned down 125 long-term care beds, and yet they rezoned parts of Eaglecrest for five-storey buildings. I don’t think that council should be in the business of playing developer,” he said.
Walker also said private housing developments such as the one in East Village — a mixed-use urban neighbourhood revitalization project — were delayed because the town was putting its energy into a public development that’s “frankly not going anywhere.”
Incumbent mayoral candidate Teunis Westbroek, who is seeking a seventh term as mayor, countered that with the Eaglecrest purchase, the town now has land to use for different types of housing, “so let’s use it.”
Other plans put on hold because reserve funds were diverted toward the golf course purchase included a planned needs assessment on whether the local Seniors Activity Centre required more space, said candidate and former councillor Robert Filmer, who is running for council again after serving from 2018 to 2022.
The golf course deal came up again when questions were raised about increasing transparency on council. Not enough information was coming out publicly from in-camera meetings, said two-term council candidate Scott Harrison. “I had to actually break the rules once to refer to the Eaglecrest buildings report, which we had for about a year, which we never formally released and had no reason to withhold,” Harris said.
When it comes to major projects such as Eaglecrest, the town should clearly show what was approved, what has been spent and what remains to be decided, “because transparency builds public trust,” said incumbent councillor candidate Jean Young.
For local resident Annette Hester, who attended Monday’s all-candidates meeting, much of the issue comes down to this question of transparency — especially around the full cost of the golf course purchase and the risks involved for taxpayers.
Hester, a policy researcher, has launched her own website called Town Hall Math that digs into the project budget — which she says had ballooned from $8.5 million to $21.2 million by June — and into decisions made by council, using freedom of information requests and the town’s own publicly available data.
She said the $21.2 million figure includes the redesign and maintenance of the golf course, upgrades to its facilities and neighbourhood projects like roads, storm drainage and a water main. Hester says on her website that almost $5 million is for the golf course work alone.
Residents want to understand more about what is going on, and the huge turnout on Monday was evidence of that, she said. “People are absolutely rallied.”