Owners of the former Royal Oak Golf Course have submitted an application to have 23 acres of the 27-acre site released from its zoning under the Agricultural Land Reserve.
The submission was made earlier this year.
Before they sold the course in 2017 the former golf course owners, the Cordero family, proposed a mixed use of single-family detached homes to the surrounding residents. The proposal was met with mixed results.
At the time, the Saanich News was told there was an agrology study underway to assess the soils for future farming. The results of that study are yet unknown but are believed to have been submitted with the application to the Agricultural Land Commission.
The current owners – a registered to numbered company 1122590 BC Ltd., which includes local figure Denis Mamic – purchased the property for a reported $3.5 million in 2017.
An online petition led by neighbour Donna Cino is nearing 1,000 signatures in support of protecting the land as an extension of the Beaver Lake Park it is adjacent to.
If it was up to former ALC chair and mayor of Saanich Frank Leonard the former golf course would stay within the ALR zoning, he said.
“[Many farms] were granted the recreational use permit way back in the ’80s with the thought being they could always go back to being agriculture land,” Leonard said. “I didn’t want to see [ALR] golf courses become development.”
Residential development continues in the area with the completion of the five-building Travino condos, construction of the 60-unit, six-storey wooden framed rental Radius, and the pending approval for the neighbourly 161-condo Doral Park Forest buildings on the 4700-block of Elk Lake Rd.
