Dear Editor:
In her letter Gold Rush Mentality Afflicts North Vancouver Developers published March 26, the writer (Irene Nevill) equates contemporary developers with the image of rapacious gold diggers of old, while forgetting that most miners to the Klondike went bust and ended their days penniless.
A similar fate awaits unwise developers who build outside of the economic restraints that determine any one project's viability, weighed against the broad scope of considerable risk.
Any developer requires land to operate and can only buy land that is offered for sale. While sale reasons can be many, they boil down to one: no one else wants or needs that property in that form, or of that age. While characterizing developers as "preying" on neighbourhoods, the fact is that (for example) the former Lynn Valley library site was only purchased by Bosa Properties under duress and pressure from District of North Vancouver staff and council as that building had no potential to be "sympathetically restored" for any purpose by anyone.
If the writer truly wants to retain their "heritage" they should be demanding that wooden sluice boxes be built to convey water from the Capilano, the pavement and curbs be torn up from Lynn Valley Road, and those unwelcome electrical wires be removed from all but the telegraph office, ending somewhere over towards Lonsdale.
As far as deciding who are the winners and losers in the equation, one aspect of the winners' gains is easily found in the community amenity contributions, paid by developers to offset many costs residents themselves are unwilling to pay for through increased taxes.
One can have sympathy for middle-class homeowners who feel the pressure of rising costs, but in many areas the costs simply represent the actual costs of a standard of living most have become accustomed to but would prefer someone else pay for. How we go about logically and prudently preparing for the net generation who will live here is the critical question. Two things are immediately obvious: most of your own sons and daughters will not be able to afford the $1 million+ homes you presently enjoy and which will increasingly be felt as a weight on your life and pocketbook, and where will you live then?
Douglas Curran
North Vancouver
