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Development editorial misguided: Colwood resident

Living in Painter/Metchosin road neighbourhood offers best vantage point to understand safety concerns

Re: Developments offer positives (Our View, May 14)

This is a very condescending and offensive editorial.

I live in Colwood and have attended meetings on the new development proposed for Painter and Metchosin roads and I wonder where the author got their information.

If the writer’s opinion is that Colwood residents are opposed to development, then our concerns are indeed falling on deaf ears. Residents almost unanimously stated that they are not opposed to development of the property, but they had serious concerns about the density and the number of dwellings proposed for this project.

They felt it would have too great an impact on the safety of students going to and from the surrounding schools, and would add an unmanageable number of vehicles – traffic and parking – to an already busy, congested street.

Who would understand the dynamics of a neighbourhood better than the people who live there and deal with it every day?

I understand that the developer wants to maximize their return on investment, and that Colwood benefits from the money these new projects bring, but this development will disrupt the lives of hundreds of residents whose opinions need to hold more weight in the decision process.

Everyone wants this new development to be something they can proudly call part of the neighbourhood, not a source of worry and irritation.

As for it being tough to envision what a development will look like, it certainly doesn’t help when the drawings don’t show driveways for nine houses on a 400-foot frontage, among other important features.

Metchosin is lovely, but many of us have made a conscious decision to live where we do. We are not people who “simply dislike change,” we are a group of citizens with legitimate concerns about a development that will significantly alter our neighbourhood and we shouldn’t be made to feel that we have to move to Metchosin if we can’t agree on this out-of-character development of 45 dwellings on a two-acre lot.

Kim Vincer

Colwood