Artist rendering of proposed housing development on the Ponderosa Lands in upper Peachland.
Image Credit: Submitted/District of Peachland
More than a decade after first being approved, work is expected to start next year on a new golf course and up to 500 homes on what’s known as the Ponderosa lands in upper Peachland.
In 2011, a plan for those lands was approved by the District of Peachland that included an 18-hole Greg Norman-designed championship golf course with 2,100 homes, a village center and more.
While work started on the golf course and 69 homes were built, the project stalled in litigation and original approvals have expired.
The land has been sold to four different owners and one of them, a mortgage lending firm called Romspen, wants to go ahead with development of five properties at the southern end that will include a “challenging” 9-hole par 33 golf course and up to 500 homes.
“Ideally, the developer is indicating, they would like to start on the golf course aspects in the spring of 2023 and work towards that while they’re also working on their detailed design work for their first phases of subdivision and development permits,” Darin Schaal, Peachland’s director of planning and development services, told iNFOnews.ca.
Peachland council gave unanimous support at its Tuesday meeting to the idea of changing the original plan for the site and allowing Romspen to move ahead on developing the property it owns.
Much work still needs to be done to change the zoning and design the project but, the agreement with the municipality calls for completion of the golf course by Nov. 1, 2025.
Failure to meet that deadline will cost the developer $100,000 a month to a maximum of $1 million.
If the golf course fails to operate for more than seven months in the future, the owner has to turn it and all business assets to Peachland for $1.
The ultimate goal is to have this golf course connect to another nine holes on lands at the north end of the Ponderosa site that are now owned by Beech Westgard. Two properties at the south end of the project have two other owners.
Work had started on the original golf course idea but there is no golfing there.
The original plan required that 10% of homes built there would be affordable.
“Staff and the developer agree that, while affordable housing is needed in the District (of Peachland), the Ponderosa neighborhood is not the best area to create affordable housing, as it is far removed from transit, existing commercial, medical and community services, Schaal wrote in his report to council.
As an alternative, Romspen has agreed to pay $5,000 into an affordable housing fund for each home it builds.
If 500 homes go in, that would total $2.5 million. It will also pay $345,000 into the fund for the 69 homes already built on the site.
That money won’t be paid until after the first 200 homes are built.
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The report says that Romspen is expecting to build 445 homes but it also says, elsewhere in the report, they will be built out in two phases of 250 homes each.
The original plan called for a commercial village center, winery, hotel/spa and ice rink. Most of those will not be part of this development.
Instead, before the start of Phase 2 (the 251st home), Romspen will have to “provide detailed plans in support of the construction of an amphitheater and seasonal ice rink, or any other similar amenities as defined by the District (of Peachland) at the time,” the report says.
Once those plans are accepted Romspen has to put up the money to make sure they’re built within two years.
It will also have to build a road connection between Ponderosa Drive and Somerset Avenue before the first phase is started and other infrastructure.
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