Brian Lee
I knew West FranPen would be discovered eventually. This past winter and spring I suffered rock hammers and excavators on both sides of the Harbour Spiel office. There’s a home being built on the east side and an empty lot being prepared for another one to the west. Down the street a bit, some contractors are chipping branches and trees from a clearing project. An ongoing landscape project across the street has received dozens of dump trucks through the winter. Other construction projects out at the end of Francis Peninsula Road ensure a stream of cement trucks and pumpers, building supply trucks, tradespeople and landscapers (with their rattle-crashing aluminum equipment trailers) all day long.
Some might complain about these noisy disturbances, but not me. I miss the serenity that I’ve come to expect in West FranPen and I’ll miss the trees that are coming down at an impressive rate, but the neighbourhood had become a little stale in recent years. I’d say about half of my neighbours are part-time residents.
Most of the old-timers who lived nearby when I bought in 2003 are dead or moved away now. One of them, Bill Course, died in May — his obituary is on page 11. He lived just down the road, alone in an old house perched above the water. That home was built in the mid-1950s and sits waiting to be replaced by something one would expect to adorn "green zone" waterfront. If it’s like many recent Harbour builds, there will be little need for the trees that blanket Bill’s property now.
It’s a little more woodsy out here compared to metropolitan neighbourhoods like Esquire Drive and Merrill Crescent. I suppose you accept your home being separated by four undeveloped properties, then three, then two, until one day, it’s Coquitlam. We won’t be getting a Starbucks just yet — there’s still a waterfront lot across the road that doesn’t even have a house on it. Imagine — just blackberry, salal and cedar, right down to the beach.
But the driveways are starting to stack up and I see now how easy it is to take these spacer lots for granted. Their role in lending privacy and a natural backdrop to your daily routine often goes unnoticed. Until they get cleared.
I see construction projects on this block that will be changing the landscape well into the 2020s. Even I plan to make a sizable scar across the lid of Francis Peninsula soon. I hate to do it but, progress. Adding value to your property is still what it’s all about when it comes to retirement planning. A recent study found that a quarter of Canadians expect their home to be their primary source of income when they retire. Since I’m not sure how many more editorials I have left in me, I need to consider how to capitalize on surging real estate values too.
But I’m also wary. Fortunes were sunk into developing much of Pender Harbour before real estate nosedived in 2008. It could all end as quickly as it began. It usually does.
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