Village council in Chase have shot down a lakeside development proposal after blowback from residents.

Wayne Quinn says he was one of about ninety people who were at council this week to oppose a plan to develop a greenspace on Little Shuswap Lake into residential housing. The property, at 950 Hysop Road, is the former site of the Sunshore Golf Course.

“It’s just idiocy to think that you’re going to build on a place where every spring there’s three or four feet of water overlying, with both groundwater and water rising from Little Shuswap Lake and the Thompson River, and all the complications that go along with building on floodplains would now be borne by the village.”

Quinn says residents would like to see the village buy the former golf course property from the developer who owns it, in order to keep it a greenspace.

“It’s been a really uplifting thing for the community to see such community involvement in this issue. But we’re also not naive, we know that the ball is in Shaughnessy’s court at this point in time. What we’re hoping is that they come to their senses and say, ‘pay us a reasonable fee for the property, and we’re out of here.'”

According to Quinn, the village defeated the re-zoning proposal by a 4-1 vote, with the mayor Rod Crowe being the only vote in favor of it.