Somenos Creek site. Picture this with 20 houses on it. Photo credit: anonymous.
Further to my post below, here is another news item on the Somenos Creek (Cowichan Valley) situation. It mostly rehashes the Times-Colonist piece but does have new comments from Eric and from the developer, notably:
Schmidt, who has tried but failed to have the six-acre site, known as Lot B, rezoned for development, said it would be worth up to $3 million if it weren’t for the presence of the artifacts and burial site.
Timbercrest has built about 300 homes on the land so far and would like to put up another 20 on Lot B.
So, lets see 20/300 = 6.7% of the 100 acres. The 100 acres was bought in the 1970s. I am going to go out on a limb and suggest that much less than 1 million was paid for the 100 acres back then. The current valuation of these six acres would value the entire parcel at 45 million. Let’s halve that:m 22 million.
So this developer has turned a one million dollar piece of land into a 20 million dollar piece of land. A 2000% return. And he wants financial consideration and compensation from the public because he happens to have a legally-protected (and morally protected, I might add) site of the highest archaeological significance on the residual piece?
This is the 21st century: Greed is no longer good, Timbercrest Estates Ltd. Give the land up, get a tax writeoff, and count your blessings you live in a country that is so extremely friendly to rampant development of land, enabling fortunes to to be made.
Northwest Coast Archaeology 