
The Cortes Community Housing Society had a number of updates to announce as they work towards having a town hall meeting for their Rainbow Ridge project.
“We’re very much looking forward to having this town hall meeting, potentially near the end of October, but please stay tuned. We’ll announce the date, the time, and the place as soon as we can get all the parties together and have all our documentation and designs ready to exhibit,” said Executive Director, Sandra Wood.
“We’ve been waiting for the Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure (MOT) to approve our subdivision plan for more than a year. It’s been a long process.”
The full service surveying and engineering firm J.E. Anderson was employed to design Rainbow Road, which will come into the housing project from Beasley Road.
Miranda Cross, Project Director of the Dillon Creek Wetlands Restoration, designed their stormwater management plan. She came up with a plan of bioswales, ponds and creeks to help capture the stormwater coming off Rainbow Ridge. The nutrients, like the nitrogen and phosphorus, will be absorbed by plants and the soil.
“Building on that preliminary work that Miranda provided us with in 2020 and 2021, we have now hired a company called Kinship to take it to the next level. They are still working with our engineers at J.E. Anderson, to adapt the routing of the water to accommodate the new layout of the townhouses. We’ve moved the buildings to different positions on the property. So the site plan has changed and therefore the routing of the stormwater has changed. That’s the piece that Kinship is now working on and building on Miranda’s original framework,”
The Cortes Community Housing Society has drawn up a covenant to do any final finishing work on the road, so that the new occupants of Rainbow Ridge will not have to wait for everything to be 100% completed before moving in.
While the society has to pay for the road into Rainbow Ridge, MOTI will maintain it in the future.
Iredale & Associates was hired to reduce site and dwelling development costs.
“In rural BC, and especially on these islands, there’s no public water system to plug into. There’s no public sewer system to plug into. Not only that, but you have to build your own roads. So that’s what we’re faced with on Cortes Island, and that obviously is a huge expense for our community to provide infrastructure for Rainbow Ridge.”

Iredale is working with the contours of the land, to position the future town homes so that they nestle more naturally into the land. This eliminates the need to spend a lot of money moving soil around for foundations and buildings.
“Our main focus over this past year is finding ways to more inexpensively locate the parking lots, driveways and the houses, including all of the infrastructure, like the sewer, water, and the power that has to get to each of those buildings.”
After this is completed, the new site layout and plans for the townhouses will be unveiled in a town hall meeting.
Wood says there has been some interest in the Gregg Road commercial property, which the society is selling to help finance Rainbow Ridge.
“We’re hoping that the deal will be closed by the end of October, and then we’ll make that announcement.”
Cortes Community Housing has also applied for a $50,000 grant to help with core operational funding & staff/volunteer training. This is especially helpful because the society has not been able to hold any community fundraising events since COVID hit.
“This was an opportunity that was made with a very short deadline and we decided to go for it. It is through the Vancouver Foundation and they realize how nonprofit societies and charities like ours have really suffered during Covid,” explained Wood.
“If we are one of the lucky ones selected this would provide $50,000 a year for up to three years potentially, and that would be a huge help as we move through the construction phase and start planning for future developments as well. Whether that’s another phase on Rainbow Ridge or in another part of the island where perhaps we’ll have land available for us in a community like Whaletown or Squirrel Cove, we’ve always had thoughts that we might like to build another affordable rental community on Cortes Island.”
She added that through a new link with Tides USA https://tides.tfaforms.net/4675606?PID=a084N00000algDT American donors can now automatically obtain tax deductible receipts from the Cortes Community Housing Society Fund for contributions of $250 or more.
Top image credit: Hikers on the Rainbow Ridge property – Photo courtesy Cortes Community Housing Society
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