Appeared in the North Shore News – May 6, 2016 Hey, let’s have some benefit to show for West Van’s fat 6.87 per cent property tax rise. First, restore the trash cans – why were they removed? – at each littered end of the 5400-block Marine Drive. Sure, that’s my block, and why not exploit…
Tag: Grosvenor
Sailing club lease deserves a closer look
Appeared in the North Shore News – September 11, 2015 Long experience persuades me that the difference between rumours and official statements is that the former are usually more accurate than the latter. Case in point: The thick fog around nautically jaunty Hollyburn Sailing Club. It’s due south of West Vancouver’s supposed gateway to a…
Atop the Christmas list for West Vancouver’s ailing retail sector: some business prosperity
Appeared in Business in Vancouver – December 22, 2014 West Vancouver, the wealthy widow of Metro, might well ask Santa for Christmas: please, how about some nice fresh prosperity for our businesses? Especially for the main business stem, Marine Drive, Ambleside. A former councillor once drily counted something like 13 beauty salons by any name…
There’s a new kid on the development block
Appeared in the North Shore News – December 5, 2014 If you loved the Weegies, as I tenderly call the West Vancouver Citizens for Good Government, you may adore the West Vancouver Housing Association. The WVHA is a new kid on the development block. Literally. It has a storefront in Dundarave. Two well-placed, mystified West…
Weegies’ waning influence shows at polls
Appeared in the North Shore News – November 21, 2014 The victors’ last drop of Spanish champagne has been drunk, the losers are taking justified consoling pride in their sacrifice to the democratic process. Moving on, what are the top 10 problems facing West Vancouver’s barely changed council? 1. Parking. 2. Ambleside rejuvenation. 3. Parking….
Defiance of Weegie’s blessing brings hope
Appeared in the North Shore News – November 7, 2014 Where to start? How about in November 2018 – when, let us pray, some tough opposition group coalesces to take on Weegie? Ah, Weegie’s just my private name for the West Vancouver Citizens for Good Government, run by a tiny core of self-proclaimed civic do-gooders,…
Wheels of progress roll over us all
Appeared in the North Shore News – October 24, 2014 You can’t stop progress. Oh, you’ve heard that? Very disappointing. I thought I’d had a brilliantly original thought for a change. What’s seldom mentioned in stories in the media, and doubtless even less in the developers’ boardrooms and in-camera council meetings, is just exactly what…
Redevelopment to set sailing club adrift?
Appeared in the North Shore News – September 12, 2014 The Hollyburn Sailing Club: More Grosvenorization of West Vancouver? Fairness, my worst fault, makes me reflective. Agent Y6xE9j reports that the club may be sailing away into the sunset – next year put on a month-to-month lease, almost always the precursor to redevelopment. Club commodore…
Grosvenor, town hall not on same clock
Appeared in the North Shore News – July 18, 2014 Dr. Lautens believes he recognizes the symptoms in the unfortunate marital breakup of a certain mayor across the water from the North Shore. Dr. Lautens, B.A., D.K.F.A.A.A., the last three letters standing for All About Anything, diagnoses the underlying malady as what the French call…
West Vancouver cop shop in need of temporary digs?
Appeared in the North Shore News – June 20, 2014 You read it here fast: West Vancouver police may be pushed out and forced into temporary quarters in the Vancouver Coastal Health buildings on Gordon at 22nd Street — to accommodate Grosvenor, impatient to get on with its gateway development on the cop shop site….