VALEMOUNT - Now in the master plan stage, there's not much area residents can do about the Valemount Glacier Destination except wait.
The year-round ski resort proposal is a potential jumping-off point for revitalizing a village that has lost nearly 200 residents in the past decade.
During the master plan review process, a detailed analysis of the proposal will look at technical and economic feasibility as well as determine potential environmental impacts to existing forestry and recreation activities. If the resort is approved to proceed, the golf, skiing and sightseeing facility would require about $800 million in capital investment.
The Valemount Ski Society was formed more than two years ago to spur this type of development. Chair Bruce Wilkinson said the group can't do much while things are in the designers' hands.
But in the lead up to this point, the society worked to be the community's voice at the negotiation table. With an approachable - and more importantly, local - eight-person executive Wilkinson said the feedback they receive is generally positive.
"But there is positive with concerns, too," he said, citing some issues such as water rights or other environmental impacts that the 2,000 bed-unit resort has generated. But an open line of communication has been key in dispelling many unfounded myths.
"Right from when we started to even look at this as a group of people, we were out there telling the public what we wanted to do because we had so many other proposals here that have fallen through - this one had to be approached in a different manner," said Wilkinson.
Within the village, the key word around the resort plan is caution.
"We need to recognize that we're early on in the process for this development and there's many, many potential off-ramps yet that could stop this development," said Valemount chief administrative officer Anne Yanciw. "So while it is a venture that's on the horizon, it isn't a certainty."
In 2003, Sunrise International announced with great fanfare their intention to move quickly on setting up a development on Canoe Mountain with golf courses, hotels, trails and highlighted by an eight-person gondola. Ground was broken on the project in 2005 with the expectation of a 2006 opening date for the hotel and golf course.
But an uncertain tourism market and increased costs were cited as reasons for the $100 million project getting shelved in 2008.
What the village is attempting to do now, after having gone through the Canoe Mountain disappointment, is stave off a rush on local real estate, explained Mayor Andru McCracken.
"Rampant speculation on land properties and houses and whatever else... it's a part of how the market functions, but it can be extremely disruptive to a community," he said. "And when I think about all the people who invested in real estate with high, high expectations of about what the Canoe Mountain gondola was going to bring in terms of housing values - those families, middle class families, had lost a lot in that brinksmanship."
Market values have dropped considerably over the past several years, agreed Jeanette Townsend, who sat as mayor of Valemount for 18 years and is now vice chair of the local chamber of commerce.
"People are not getting their investment back," she said, citing one home that went on the market for more than $400,000 and eventually sold for less than $300,000.
To keep these things from happening again requires good management of the proposal, said McCracken. But it also requires the village to focus on the things it already has going for it.
Yanciw, who moved to Valemount from Calgary a year and half ago, said she found what she was looking for in the village's current state.
"I was attracted to Valemount as it is," she said. "I didn't need VGD (Valemount Glacier Destination) for it to be an attractive community."
And while the town is ripe for development, that doesn't mean it's going to happen tomorrow, added Wilkinson.
"It's going to take us time to go through these processes. And they're there for a good cause. The government has a good system for use of Crown land," he said.
According to McCracken, what the village needs to do is look ahead to two futures - one where the development goes ahead and one where it doesn't.
"Having gone through this process, which I say we're investing significant energy into, whether it happens the way we perceive it to happen, the way the developer wants it to happen or if it doesn't happen, Valemount is going to be a better place for it for having gone through this process," he said. "In the sense that we've considered our future as a community, really having thought about where it is we want to go."
But where it needs to go is somewhere that provides an injection to the local economy, said Townsend.
"At one time this was a really thriving community," she said, noting a desperate need for development now. "People with families have moved away for employment reasons."
-- In the next part of the Citizen's ongoing series on Valemount, niche businesses get their shot while another major residential and commercial development stalls.
