West Vancouver council accused of selling public beach access trail to private buyer

The District of West Vancouver council is accused of making a deal with a private buyer that has removed access to part of a beach for the public.

The waterfront property at 3000 Park Lane has been listed for just under $7 million and is now listed as “sold – pending.”

Residents say the “pending” refers to a condition by the prospective buyer that the municipality closes a trail to that part of the beach to the public.

Beside the trail is vacant land owned by the West Vancouver District that was originally set aside for a road.

Christopher Molineux has lived in the area since 2011.

“This access has been here for over 100 years, as far as I know,” he said. “I’ve been told there are documents that show its existence in 1918 and it just serves as a great spot for the community to get relatively easy access without too many stairs.”

Molineux said the beach access is part of the character of the neighbourhood.

“Because it’s now under threat, all of a sudden I’ve been sifting through all these memories,” he added.

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The land was put up for sale about a year ago and marketed as “Your Own Waterfront” with “unobstructed southwest facing ocean views where you can build your luxury dream home.”

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West Vancouver Mayor Mark Sager told Global News there was an offer of about $5 million that the district felt was too low.

“The property is very narrow so the advice that came back to us through staff is we should stop up and close the entire road and sell it as a larger chunk and that did attract a larger offer,” he said.

Sager wanted to be clear that the public is not losing access to the beach.

While that path is set to close, there are two other paths just a few hundred metres on either side of it.

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Residents said this trail is the most popular and the easiest to use.

Over the years, Molineux said they have watched the fireworks from the beach, had family picnics, taken out their kayaks and spent time with family and friends.

He said the next set of stairs is not that far away, however, there are many more stairs.

The bigger issue, he said, is that the West Vancouver mayor and council seemingly would allow someone to buy public beach access or any public amenities as a condition of sale.

Molineux said residents were assured the public beach access would remain when the house on Park Lane went up for sale.

“From what I can tell, (the mayor and council) were approached by a prospective purchaser who said ‘I’ve got some money and you can have this extra money if you sell off the beach access and I get that property,'” he said. “And the council said ‘sounds good to us. If you’ve got money, we’re willing to listen and sell off the beach access’ so they had the meeting for it.”

Molineux said that hours after the July 22 meeting where the issue was discussed the property was listed as “sold – pending.”

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Sager said the money from the sale will go towards buying the last remaining waterfront house in Ambleside and selling the trail saves residents from a tax hike.

“To raise that money we’d have to increase the taxes by just about two per cent,” he said.

Molineux said he understands money is important but some things transcend money, especially in a community like West Vancouver.

He added that the message to residents and visitors is “when you see a sign in West Vancouver that says ‘beach access’ you can read in invisible ink ‘for sale’ underneath it. That’s the message that comes across and that’s selling off the character of the community, it really is.”