With horse racing long gone from North Saanich’s Sandown Park, plans to move forward with the 39-hectare site are beginning to fall into place.
A new offer by the owners, the Vancouver-based Randall family, and development group Omicron that includes covering close to $700,000 to remediate the property has gained unanimous approval from North Saanich councillors.
“That really is the main change to the earlier proposal,” said North Saanich Mayor Alice Finall.
Since the track closed several years ago, the council has considered various plans for the land, most recently in April 2012. Finall said the owners’ new offer includes paying for the necessary drainage, both to and from the property.
As well, the Sandown proposal calls for 33.6 hectares to be transferred to District of North Saanich ownership.
“They will retain and will have rezoning for commercial development of [4.85 hectares],” Finall said. “There will be no residential.”
Retail, offices and light industrial uses are all possibilities, she said. Residential use was considered for a time.
Finall said the cost of remediation was a big issue for a number of council members, and that she was impressed by the “level of goodwill” shown in the latest proposal. She said that remediation includes removal of the grandstand and side buildings, as well as derelict stables and a pair of old residences.
The Victoria Airport Authority has offered clean soil it has on hand to help with the remediation effort.
Remediation requirements were set by the Agricultural Land Commission because the property is in the Agricultural Land Reserve. For its part, the district would replace the 4.85 hectares of agricultural land slated for development with a similarly sized piece of adjacent municipal land.
The step addresses the ALC stricture that there be compensation for property removed from the Agricultural Land Reserve.
Finall said Sandown, between Glamorgan Road and the Pat Bay Highway, has been a consistent topic of conversation among the public since she started as mayor in 2008.
“There’s been a lot of expressed anxiety by residents over this,” she said. “It’s a very large parcel and it’s pretty well in the centre of the municipality.
“This proposal, even without this additional assistance from the owner, had a very high level of community support.”
Finall said the 33.6 hectares coming to the district could see natural areas retained as part of a farm-management plan, and there may be trails added to allow public access. She said the district is not planning to take on any farming activity.
The next step for the proposal, which gained unanimous approval from the committee of the whole, is a vote by council on Oct. 7. Finall said the proponents are also planning at least three public meeting to discuss their plans.
Horses were last a feature at Sandown in 2008, when there were three days of harness racing. As many as 90 harness and thoroughbred cards were held annually through the 1980s, but that number had dwindled to a dozen events in 2001.
The racetrack was build in the mid-1950s.
