Much like their assessments, West Vancouver houses have been getting bigger for decades.
Some of the large homes are beautiful and others are ugly enough to scare the grass off the lawn.
Still — taken in isolation — there is no cause to object to any home in the district. The rub, though, is that none of the houses exist in isolation; they’re each part of a community.
Council chambers were at capacity Monday night with a crowd that ran the gamut from developers to builders. Many displayed a lack of civility, interrupting council’s debate with a chant, but what was more unfortunate was their lack of vision.
Builders in West Vancouver may be in competition with one another but they also need to be in co-operation. If not, the harmonious neighbourhoods that entice so many buyers to the North Shore’s most affluent hamlet will be replaced by a monstrous mishmash with no regard for the district’s history or its future.
We commend Couns. Nora Gambioli and Christine Cassidy for standing up to the hostile crowd and backing sensible limits on house size. It’s too bad the rest of council didn’t support them, even those who ran on preserving neighbourhood character in last year’s election.
For developers, the flurry to build bigger and broader has been a gold rush. But when the gold is gone, all that’s left is a ghost town.
We hope council acts quickly because if there’s one thing scarier than monsters, it’s ghosts.
