Crowd shot of people assembling for the meeeting

Construction coming to the (Many) Common Areas of Mansons Landing

Close to 50 people turned up at Mansons Hall on January 24, for an update on the construction coming or already underway in the downtown Mansons area. The Cortes Housing Society, Southern Cortes Community Association (SCCA), Cortes Island Community Foundation and Cortes Island Pickleball Society were on hand to describe what’s taking place at Rainbow Ridge, the multipurpose courts and the Village Commons

 Regional Director Mark Vonesch exclaimed, “The big news here on Cortes is that the Housing Society is going to start building houses this year.” 

Sandra Wood, who’s been at the heart of the Rainbow Ridge affordable housing project from the beginning, added, “It’s exciting to finally get shovels in the ground. We feel like we’ve been shovel ready for years.”   

Manda Aufochs Gillespie, from the Cortes Island Foundation, described another focus of the meeting “More and more, it’s clear that the Village Commons is really this whole area and all the things that we gather in the heart of Mansons to do.”

Sadhu Johnston explaining the advantages of going forward with a more Cortes Island approach

She mentioned the shared office and workspace which was close to completion beside FOCI, the CKTZ radio station and the little green with a picnic table.

“The space is opened up so that you can get into that area where the pavilion is basically breaking ground as we speak. So by the summer, the pavilion will be up, wired into the radio station, and set up for performances. We also have put in these storage spaces. We have signed a lease for two of them with the Cortes Island Food Bank, as a drop off and distribution center, but also just to expand their capacity. The other two we’re hoping will be for non-profit and the public because, as we all know, somehow on this island there is never enough space.”

 “This whole space has largely been possible because the SCCA was like, ‘yes, let’s think about parking as a community effort downtown.’ Which I’ve really appreciated because before it looked like we would have to use a whole huge chunk of that rather small space for parking. There has been the creation of a set of new parking spaces, which is going to be  signed, I think, by this summer.”

Cora Moret, from the SCCA, continued,  “I love the idea that this is all the Village Commons and that all these nonprofits are looking for the same thing, which is the Cortes community. So why would each place have a separate parking lot? It’s all within a few dozen metres of each other.” 

“There is a sign  as you come up past this parking lot, directly to the west of the parking lot between the skate park and the fire hall.  It just looks like  a cleared gravel area, and we’ll work on that. What we’d like to see is an area that is central , that  could host some EV charging stations. That hopefully is coming in the near future. BC Hydro wants to pay for these but they have  certain parameters around them. So we’re working on that too.”

“We’re going to be bringing in more grant projects for  the area between the skate park and the parking lot. We are very open to input. We’re happy to hear what you think of what we’re doing, what you think we should do or could do.”

Don Hall, from the Pickleball Society, added  “We’re trying to build multi purpose sports courts that would be for pickleball, basketball, lacrosse, volleyball, badminton, anything that’s appropriate for a hard court surface. It would be fenced, so we wouldn’t have to chase balls all over the place. We’ve got about 40 people right now that are part of our Pickleball Society. They’re paid up members. We currently have the two courts behind the school and those get very busy in the summer . We like to sit around and socialize a little bit, but most of us just want to play. So we’re looking for a place where we can have two courts here behind the skate park. We’ve been working with Manda, Sadhu, Cora and the SCCA board to  try to figure out  the best location, and arrived at the spot behind the skate park.”

“There aren’t a lot of residences close by. Even the ones that are near the school, we’ve never had any complaints from when we’re banging away there in the summer.” 

We’ve got a proposal in with the SRD right now to try to get some community works funds that would help kickstart some of the groundwork that we need to get done. We’re fundraising, our provisional budget is about $180,000. We’re looking for donations, if anybody wants to contribute, you can donate through the SCCA and get a tax receipt. We think we can probably get going on some of the construction this summer, just depending on how we do with fundraising and grants and donations.”

“Potentially, we’re looking at this being ready late summer, in the fall would be ideal. Maybe more realistically, we’ll have courts next winter sometime. That provisional budget I mentioned, $180,000 is without a roof. In phase two, we’ve got some kind of roof structure, and that would make the courts more useful for other activities besides just the sports.”

“Even though we think of them as sports courts, they’ll also be available for other activities. I can imagine the fire hall using that as an emergency station as well, right next to the fire hall.”

Sadhu Johnston. Executive Director of the Cortes Island Housing Society gave an update on the construction that will soon begin at the Rainbow Ridge affordable housing site. 

“Many of you have been involved with Rainbow Ridge over the last five years, designing it and conceiving of what it is to be there. We were designing it based on BC Housing coming in to fund it.”

“We’re moving away from a lot of those elements. The first and probably the biggest thing is we’re building it in phases because the idea of building and opening 24 town homes at once created  a strain on the resources locally, which meant we couldn’t build it locally. It also was, in my mind, a challenge to get 24 units tenanted with Cortes people. I think it would end up pulling people from off-island to occupy them. So at this point,  we’re planning on doing a first phase which would be three buildings with a total of seven units.”

“If you remember the older design called for this part of Rainbow Ridge being subdivided.  As soon as you subdivide, the Ministry of Transportation comes in and starts to require a lot of other things. The first thing that they wanted was this existing former logging road that many of us used, including the wolves,  to be paved. It was going to be one of those 55  kilometer an hour roads which was wide and paved, which means now you have a bunch of stormwater draining off it. So you need to build a big stormwater pond, and then that pond needs to overflow. So we were designing a little creek that would go down to the main ditch. Once we move away from the big road and keep the existing road more as a driveway, we don’t need to manage all the stormwater. That’s freed us up from a lot of infrastructure work.” 

“During this phase, we’re only going to have cars coming just to the entrance, just past where the fire hall is. Those changes strip away two to three million dollars worth of road and site work and destructive forces on the property, which  is great because it allows us to reduce the impact but also save money.”

“Our aspirations now are to keep all  rainwater that lands on the site with rainwater catchment and individualized rain gardens.  Whitney from up in Whaletown is helping us with the permaculture design so we could really be using native plants and more of a native landscaping plan rather than what had originally been designed by landscape architects.”

“This ring here is the ring around our well. Originally we had  some of the septic pipes going through that area, which required VIHA (Island Health) to require a lot more water filtration infrastructure. We’ve pulled a lot of that out of there and are  saving a couple hundred grand on all the filtration equipment that’s required.”

“Bruin is really helping us to rethink a lot of this. It’s just so great to have an engineer that has done projects to bring that perspective  to us. So it’s really cool, blessed that we’ve got such a great team.” 

“We’re looking  to design the septic and build it in phases as the project grows over a decade. We’re not needing to put everything in the ground at once, which means we hopefully don’t have all those expenditures at once.” 

“What we are looking to do this year is  a community building,  a driveway, land clearing, and hopefully, the first three buildings, which would represent seven units, and those are mostly one bedrooms. We’re hoping to use money that we’ve already raised, and then to raise additional money, so that we don’t have to get bank loans because banks require a lot of other things, including subdivision. That requires a mortgage, which requires higher rents.”

“So rather than getting a big mortgage from BC Housing, then needing to get rent subsidies from BC Housing to pay their mortgage, we’re hoping to go mortgage free and charge affordable rents based on the fact that we don’t have to pay a debt.” 

“At this point we feel confident that we can get the infrastructure work done in at least two to four of the units with the funds we have. So we’ll be out trying to raise additional money to get this first phase done.  Our hope is that rather than hiring a construction crew from Campbell River who have to bring their crews here,  pay for accommodations here and have lots of ferry fees,  we will build up a crew on Cortes and that crew will first build our community building and then build each of the units.”

“The community building would be a larger covered area, so we can build walls and things under cover and out of the rain. We can have a workshop there.” 

“It’s a pretty fundamental rethink, but it feels a little bit more like going back to how this building was built, the fire hall was built, and many of our seniors’ village buildings.”  

“One other substantial change from  the first version is that it was a lot closer to the Cortes Island Seniors’ Village. We heard loud and clear from them that they support the project, but they don’t want to lose all the trees. There are some nicer cedars.  So we’re moving the project south. There’s a natural land clearing down here that we’ll be taking advantage of this way.”

“That’s the overview of a pretty major pivot for us in how we get the project moving forward. Instead  trying to raise $16 million to get this off the ground, we’re really just looking at $3ish million dollars to get it off the ground.”

There was an extensive question period. 

Here are some of the answers: 

Q: What about using renewable energy? 

Sadhu Johnston: “We do have some funding to do a district energy study. So we’re currently evaluating the viability of doing geothermal as well as some other options that would be renewable energy sources. If that works,  we might even try to have a hub where we could serve some of the other buildings with renewable energy.The community building would be that energy hub.”

“Either way, it’ll be where the water equipment is, the electrical panels and  it’ll be kind of a big covered area  for phasing the construction and tool storage and stuff. Part of our concept that we’re trying to flesh out is if we can put in some basic laundry, showers and bathtubs, and that it would be available to members of the community that don’t have  those amenities in their own homes. We did a survey last year and 20% to 25% of the people that responded don’t have running water in their homes.  As a housing society,  we’re committed to trying to support people in different ways of living.”  

“Manda’s calling it the Waterworks, which I kind of like.  We’re talking to the Cortes Island Women’s Resource Centre about a collaboration. It’d be available to men and women, but  it would be a kind of a membership service for people that live on Cortes, so not for people that are just coming through. You would be able to swipe your card and get access to a series of laundry machines, showers, a bathtub, and maybe even a sauna in there.  If you’re living rough, being able to take a hot bath,  do some laundry and maybe have a sauna could make a big difference in your life. We do have a funder lined up that’s interested in helping to fund that part of it. We could even put in some couches and make it comfortable.” 

Q: What about using composting toilets?  

Sadhu Johnston: “Water conservation is definitely something we’re focusing more on. We can do composting toilets.  So that is something we’re looking at as a part of this rainwater catchment for irrigation.” 

Q: How are you going to heat homes if the power goes out? 

Sadhu Johnston: “What we’re trying to get is  an energy system that would be powered renewably so that if the power did go out, we could continue to heat the homes.  We were in some of the senior village homes. In the first phase they had underfloor heat. They were saying that even when the power is out for days, those houses stay warmer than the newer units that don’t have the underfloor heating. We’re looking at getting as close as we can to the passive house certification, which is  a pretty efficient building, which makes it a lot easier to heat.” 

Q: What about using a generator or some kind of backup system for heating and electricity?

Sadhu Johnston: “BC Hydro currently has a very attractive program. For housing societies, you get up to $75,000 for batteries, systems, and $75,000 for solar. With this system, hopefully we would have a battery backup system that would power those buildings rather than everyone needing a generator.”

Q: How are you working together with the Cortes Island Fire Department 

Sadhu Johnston: “We might look to move the fire hall fence line down to give them more training room space and to give more helipad space. When the weather’s not good, they bring in the Cormorant, which is this massive helicopter. There’s a line of trees that are really causing them a problem. So we’re going to clear a line of trees along this fence line at the request of the fire hall.” 

“You were asking about firefighting water. So we’re looking at some new tanks that we’re considering moving over here into this corner, which is a little bit higher, gives them a little bit more pressure. Our original plan was that Rainbow Ridge would clear this line and we’ll put our own tanks there. But as Cora was saying about parking, it’s kind of the same with water. If we have big enough tanks, we could all share them rather than everyone having to have their own.  They could be used almost like a fire hydrant for fighting a fire at Seniors Village, Rainbow Ridge, or Fire Hall.  One of the things we’re looking at is whether we can put a pipe down that would actually give a lot more water. So, using this as an opportunity to start a bit of a fire hydrant system in the Village Commons area in the downtown.” 

Q: Are you working together with FOCI (Friends of Cortes Island) on environmental concerns? 

Sadhu Johnston: “We’ve been working closely with FOCI. We’re trying to get this done before nesting season, so we’re a little bit under the gun. We’re going to be doing some volunteer days to try to clear some of the underbrush and move it to other locations. The Rainbow Ridge plan calls for a green corridor on either end of the property, so there’s wildlife corridors.” 

Q: Are you going to be using volunteer labour? 

Sadhu Johnston: “There’s opportunities for volunteers. We’re going to structure our insurance, and we’d really be calling on folks to come out and help at different times.  Look for emails inviting you to join us in construction, cause we would really love to build up community involvement with our own labor.”

Q: Is there any way that this construction could be used to train workers?

Sadhu Johnston: “Bruin (The housing society’s project manager) was involved in a project elsewhere that we’re engaging in discussion around using the construction as a bit of a training process. So we’re exploring whether we work with VIU or one of the colleges and try to get Red Seal certification for the carpenters that are on the site. And maybe this  becomes a training program for younger folks on island to work here and get trained and actually get a Red Seal certification through the process.”

There were some concerns that removing trees from the Rainbow Ridge site might weaken those that remain. Mark Lombard, from the Cortes Community Forest, described ways to address this:

“We might have to do a little bit of spiral pruning to make them a little bit more wind firm, but the particularly dangerous root rot trees are eventually going to have to probably come out. From a wildfire risk reduction perspective, we don’t want to have a whole bunch of conifers right over the houses here. When you think about fire smarting appropriately, you want to have a tree length away from your house. Over time, as some of the conifers probably come out, maybe we can have some oak trees and plant some other rhododendrons and  eventually it’ll transition to more of a landscape like it is in the Seniors Village, which is really beautiful and attractive.”

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