First Nation becomes major developer

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The Tseshaht First Nation is poised to become a serious power in local land developments.

The Nation is now a major developer in the city of Port Alberni after their announcement yesterday of the purchase of part of the former APD lands after turning a portion of last summer’s $5 million grant from the provincial government into the purchase of the upper parking lot and lumber storage area.

Chief Councillor Wawmeesh (Ken Watts) says there are hundreds of Tseshaht throughout the Pacific Northwest looking to return home to the Alberni Valley.

“When we ask them ‘what are your priorities’, housing continues to come up and many of them shared “we’re willing to move back home even if it’s off reserve, we just want to be back in our territory in Port Alberni”, and so it’s a big priority,” he said. “It’s our comprehensive community plan and our strategic plan and it’s nice to see that we’re moving forward with it.

Watts says they hope to build 50 units on the 7.9 acre site but  there’s no immediate timeline of when work will begin as they need to do the neccesary studies and go through the city’s rezoning and planning process.

He said even though the property is adjacent to their reserve area of Teepis (Polly’s Point) they intend to keep the land as fee simple and turn other recently purchased lands into extentions to reserves.

“We own fee-simple lands already, the former Sproat School and the former Catalyst airport lands. We’ll be adding those to reserve though. Those are different. We’ve had them for more than 20 years,” he said. “We held them so we could leverage them, but now we have this other land now, which frees up a bunch of opportunities so right now it’s just let’s get some housing built as soon as we can, not just for our people but the people of the valley.”

Tseshaht also announced this week progress on a possible business park along Highway 4 across from the Ahtsik Art Gallery, and received a million dollar provincial grant to build a road and begin planning a commercial development area.

(Photo: Tseshaht members and supporters celebrate Thursdays announcement at the former APD parking lot.)