Public Consultation
Island Coastal Ventures is committed to the continued engagement of neighbours, community stakeholders, non-government organizations, and government regulators in meaningful, inclusive, and transparent dialogue about the project’s plans and designs. Public input offered as a result of this dialogue has been, and continues to be, systematically documented and reviewed by Island Coastal Ventures and its consulting team.
Contrary to the “typical” development timetable of project planning and design followed by public presentation and defense of the design, Island Coastal Ventures has tried to build trust and respect with the surrounding community and decision-makers, and to understand neighbour and stakeholder values prior to the undertaking of site planning. This approach enables the planning and design team to respond in a real-time manner and adaptively evolve the project’s objectives and development solutions as community or regulatory concerns arise. It also allowed for the inclusion of neighbour and community concerns into the Site Adaptive Planning and Design process.
At the inception of the project, Cipre Design Consortium, a group of professional planners based in Courtenay BC, was retained by Island Coastal Ventures to compile an exhaustive list of third party stakeholders, as well as other potentially affected groups and individuals. This list was organized according to the following categories:
- Provincial and federal government agencies and staff who were likely to become involved in the review of the Longlands development application;
- CVRD Area Directors, their alternates, and previous directors;
- CVRD community and property services staff;
- Comox Fire Department Chief and staff;
- Members of the Comox, Cumberland, and Courtenay Councils and their staff;
- K'ómoks First Nation Band Manager and staff;
- Leading members of the Comox Valley business community;
- Immediate Longlands neighbours;
- Extended Longlands neighbours (including downstream property owners);
- Non-governmental organizations (specifically environmental, land conservation, and regional growth groups); and
- Media groups (local and regional newspapers).
Public and regulatory consultations were initiated in March 2008, and will continue throughout the rezoning process. Consultations with most of the individuals and groups listed above have been undertaken using a variety of methods, ranging from informal one-on-one discussions and private site tours with concerned neighbours and interested third parties, through small-scale meetings with regulatory agencies, stakeholder organizations, and residents’ groups, to large-scale public information sessions with invitation lists numbering in the hundreds.
