Breaking News October 22, 2007

We are hearing that the Columbia-Shuswap Regional District (CSRD) (County) has hit a brick wall in it's application to the Land Reserve Commission of B.C. (LRC) to allow a block exclusion of Agricultural Land Reserve (ALR) lands in South Revelstoke. (If the CSRD had been listening to the constant rhetoric coming from the LRC since February 2007, they would have known that the LRC has effectively placed a 10-year moratorium on releasing any ALR lands in B.C., and are, in fact, mandated to observe a net GAIN of ALR land over the next decade) The some 34 parcels of privately held lands directly below and to the south of Revelstoke Mountain Resort were expected to be 'rubber-stamped' into an mass exclusion that would then allow the subject lands greater density and subdivision potential. The proposed OCP put forth by the CSRD in early 2007 left only landowners in South Revelstoke the faint hope of partitioning their land to any density, while leaving landowners in West Revelstoke and the Begbie Bench with 5-10 acre parcels as their only option. Now landowners under Revelstoke Mountain Resort and southward similarly have their hands tied; ALR lands can only be subdivided to a minimum of 10 acres, leaving just a couple parcels that have any subdivision potential to the south (an 18 or 19 acre parcel still cannot be subdivided). Revelstoke Mountain Resort lands are largely unaffected as less than 5 of their 500 acres of development land are in the ALR.
So what does this mean for the Revelstoke real estate market? In an already impossibly tight development land supply market, some 600 acres of land will not be available to subdivide under any ALR block exclusion. In South Revelstoke, where all development of any concentration was prescribed to occur, speculators who took early positions in ALR lands have a decade to wait.
Who benefits? Perhaps Begbie Bench and West Revelstoke landowners who are not under any ALR designation. But this will not happen immediately; The newly proposed OCP had been steered by the Rural Revelstoke Advisory Committee, largely stacked with an anti-development sentiment. Will they open up West Revelstoke and Begbie Bench to greater density? It seems that eventually they will be reluctantly forced to respond to the landowner's wishes and not their own biases.
Hint: Now is the time to take a position in Begbie Bench and West Revelstoke acreages. The North, East, and South are closed to development.

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