KOOTENAY LAKE VILLAGE
A 400- acre parcel of pristine wilderness is being gently transformed into residential area
When you look around Nelson, it’s no wonder the West Kootenay town has earned the name “Best Small Arts Town in Canada.”
Its quaint city hall and courthouse — rendered in turn- of- the- century architecture — set a tone that is dramatically different from many other small towns in B. C. The lakeside town has attracted an eclectic mix of settlers: from Russian emigrants escaping religious persecution and war resisters fleeing the Vietnam draft to land- seeking hippies, artists, writers and foodies.
It has also attracted the likes of Oliver Berkeley, an expat Brit with a dream of building a community that preserves and appreciates the best the pristine mountain and lake region around Kootenay Lake has to offer.
“I was looking for a place to emigrate to. I had been travelling around the world, the Far East, Europe, Southeast Asia and I must have come across the name Nelson 10 times. It was ridiculous.”
He committed to spending long enough to learn to snowboard at the White Water ski hill. But as life would have it, he met a local woman, got married and settled down. Then the University of London graduate got a chance to take a creative turn in a career that had included corporate finance, civil works construction and real estate development.
In 2004, the German company Pluto Darkwoods was disposing of its 165,000 hectares of undeveloped forest properties after the provincial government released the land from the Forest Land Reserve. Berkeley persuaded the company to sell him and his partners about 400 acres of pristine wilderness, rather than go to the market.
It became quickly obvious Berkeley and his vision of an environmentally sensitive development for Kootenay Lake Village put him in a category of his own. His bankers weren’t sure what to make of a developer who spends $ 110,000 spraying wildflower seed in the development’s forests or $ 1 million cutting 22 kilometres of trails throughout the parcel. Or his passing up the opportunity to sell off most of the lots during the red- hot real estate years between 2004 and 2008.
Nonetheless, he has done well. His first phases sold out quickly, with one selling $ 8 million worth of property in one week alone. Kootenay Lake Village, he says, has more bare land sales than all the other developments in the region in the last 10 years. And he maintains a database of more than 1,000 people who have expressed an interest in buying lots.
The current market slowdown has him cutting his prices by 10 per cent and more, but Berkeley is philosophical. “Everyone thinks that what North America is going through right now is a unique experience. The reality is that Europe went through it in the 1980s and it lasted four or five years.”
“Right from the inception, we identified the biggest risk in the market was a market turn. So we have always focused on producing smaller phases with our biggest at 20 lots, but we typically release about 15 lots [ at a time]. This project will carry on for two or three more real estate cycles. “
If his approach to real estate financing is conservative, his development methods are anything but.
He took two and a half years to research and plan the 420- acre community before going to market with his first batch of fully serviced strata lots. The development concept is based on the European open- plan approach where properties are clustered together and 300 acres of land and protected green space dedicated for use by all owners. While that proportion may seem extravagant, in fact, the Kootenay Lake Village’s lower capital costs permit that luxury.
“We don’t build a golf course, an Olympic swimming pool or all the other things. We have spent about $ 1 million on building the trails where an 18- hole golf course would cost between $ 20 and $ 40 million.” He has also spent close to $ 6 million on a state- of- the- art water and sewage system that far exceeds provincial standards.
Safeguarding his conservationist approach has led to some drastic measures. For instance, when development of an adjacent parcel of land looked like it could be a spoiler, Berkeley jumped in and bought the 12- acre piece, for three times more than his entire initial investment. “We just didn’t want the owners to be neighbours to an RV park.”
Instead of sending in the bulldozers to clear what was swamp land, Berkeley and his crew worked by hand to minimize the environmental impact.
“We put in five kilometres of drain tile to get rid of the water and then we slowly went through the lots and cleaned out everything by hand and preserved all the forest we could. It took us nine months.”
Setting the property lines and building sites was an equally unconventional process. “We ran around with guys holding 20- foot- long bamboo canes with ribbons on them, representing a two- storey house. Then we would move to the next lot and see if they ( the future houses) would be able to see each other.”
Then there are features such as a yoga platform in the upland forest with a view of sunrise over the lake, and the 70- year- old, 32- foot Chris Craft cabin cruiser that would make a quirky warming hut for hikers if Berkeley can find a way that is cheaper than a helicopter to transport it to the development’s summit.
Berkeley eschews design restrictions that insist on owners building homes that fall into strict shape, colour and material categories.
“We try to drive as much architectural diversity as we can. Whether or not your neighbour likes your design is irrelevant.”
That isn’t to say there are no restrictions. As the siting exercise indicates, owners are limited to certain building sizes and locations on the lots, known as the “building envelopes.”
“We also used a cherry picker to determine building envelopes. We dedicate about a third of the lot for the building. And the rest you can’t touch. And if you cut a tree down, you have to put in three more. “
On the waterfront, no docks are permitted, thereby preserving shoreline views.
Instead, Berkeley has designated a common beach park to serve as the site of a future marina and clubhouse. The architecture of the handful of homes that have been built has tilted toward contemporary design with liberal use of concrete and steel mixed with wood and other natural materials. Berkeley’s waterfront home, called Habitat 4, boasts a dramatic 18- foot door opening out to stunning views of the lake, a professional kitchen, recycled leather floors and a frameless style glass shower. It is listed at $ 795,000, reduced from $ 1.1 million.
Another “waterfront cabin” in the same modern style is a steel and aluminum black box designed by Chilean architect Rocio Romero. The .75- acre lot with 104 feet of beachfront is selling for $ 499,000, down from an original asking price of $ 795,000.
Goran Mutavdzic, a South African who found Kootenay Lake Village while surfing the web in his former Cape Town home, plans something even more innovative for the 10,000- square- foot waterfront lot he and his spouse bought in June for $ 379,000.
An alternative energy engineer, he is looking to a B. C.- based builder called Sirewall to construct a rammedearth designed home out of compressed sand, something akin to the adobe structures that have served the Pueblo Indians in the U. S. southwest for centuries.
“It’s all local materials and there is no maintenance,” he says.
As for Kootenay Lake Village, he says, “this place is perfect for what we were looking for — out of the city, but not miles and miles from anywhere.”
Berkeley saves his pride and joy for the last leg of a recent tour: a central park for the community. The concept is partly borne of his experience living for a few years renovating a centuries- old villa in Italy’s Umbria region. In the village, he noticed women gathering, as they have done for 500 years, to do their laundry and gossip, making it the living centre of the community.
His central park, with its community gardens, terraced amphitheatre carved out of a quarry, and kids’ adventure playground, would serve the same social purpose.
“What I like is where people connect. And they connect in the parks and on the trails.”