Lots 62, 64, 65 and 68 on Rivendell Drive sat bare for years. The owner of these lots looked to a new kind of zoning on Bowen Island in the hopes that they would sell. Lot owner and developer Wolfgang Duntz managed to get his plan approved and build two units with separate owners on each lot. Today, construction on one of the lots is complete. The three others are under construction with new owners eagerly awaiting their completion. Reflecting on this project, Duntz says that it has been a breakthrough in some ways, a learning experience, and a project his company is unlikely to repeat.
“They were beautiful lots, with a view even,” says Duntz. “But they were not selling. Under the existing zoning, it was possible to build a single family home with a rental unit, but building such a home would’ve cost more than $1 million. We wanted to build homes people could actually afford, and with this plan, we wanted to prove that a laneway-style house wouldn’t ruin the neighbourhood.”
The goal was to build a two-bedroom unit for less than $400 thousand and a three-bedroom unit for less than $550. According to Bowen Island’s Official Community Plan (OCP) this plan never met the standard of affordable housing, but it did “diversify” the market housing available on Bowen Island. In an effort to reach their targets, WCD Developments (Duntz’s company) froze the assessed property values for the lots to 2015 values. Still, they did not meet their goal.
“It turns out those were prices we could not build for,” says Duntz. He says that while wages for workers and trades people has increased alongside the cost of materials, another impact on building prices are recent changes to the building code which have increased the standard to which homes now need to be built.
By the time the lots came up for sale there was already a long line of people interest in purchasing them.
“We had this waiting list, but what we didn’t want was a bidding war,” says Duntz. “So, it was very uncomfortable but what we did in the end was pull names from a hat. Everyone agreed this was the only fair solution, selling to the highest bidder would have corrupted the process.”
Duntz adds that while the project met the goals of providing more affordable homes than what buyers can find elsewhere on the island (the smaller units sold between $421,000-$487,000 + GST ), he feels that mostly, this project drove home what is required to build homes that are actually “affordable” on Bowen Island.
“These are all unique, single-family homes still, and building in that way is just too expensive,” he said. “To build affordable homes, I would need to go back to building the way I did back in Germany, and that is more row-home type developments. To bring down prices, you need to build multiple homes with one foundation, and one roof-system. There is only one example of this currently on Bowen Island and that is up above Village Square and below the Municipal Hall, and if you want to build ‘affordable’ homes you need some way of subsidizing them, which may be the route we go with our upcoming rezoning projects.”
