By David F. Rooney
Under pressure from a campaign by RMR and its owner, Northland Properties Corporation, developer David Evans spoke about his plans for the Tree House Hotel with EZ Rock’s Shaun Aquiline and me earlier this week.
The British-born entrepreneur is at the center of two controversial development proposals — a 1,500 high-density residential neighbourhood in Arrow Heights and the Tree House Hotel.
While the residential development has raised many eyebrows in town, the Tree House Hotel project he wants to build on Camozzi Road has so agitated Revelstoke Mountain Resort and its owners in Northland Properties Corporation that they are waging a public-relations campaign against it.
At the heart of the campaign is RMR’s conviction that Evans’ ultimately intends to build not just the Tree House Hotel but what amounts to an alternative to RMR’s own base village. While Mayor Mark McKee believes RMR’s take on this project, the rest of Council apparently does not and has so-far approved Evans’ submissions. This will all come to a head at a public hearing at the Community Centre at 7 pm on on Tuesday, July 26.
I had an extensive interview on Thursday, July 21, with Northlands spokesman Graham Rennie, president of Northland Asset Management Co., regarding the resort’s take on this issue that will appear online in The Revelstoke Current on Saturday, July 23.
As for the campaign, Evans denies he has any plans beyond constructing the Tree House Hotel, even though he refers to the Tree House Hotel project as “Phase One,” which implies there is another phase. You can hear what he has to say in this two-part interview recorded at EZ Rock earlier this week:
