In order to keep this heritage house in the community long term, West Vancouver may be looking at a short-term solution.

The Boyd House, located at 985 Duchess Ave was given its first reading In the December 2nd Council meeting, there was a proposal in which the owner wants to subdivide the property into two separate lots and along with this would be able to accommodate short-term rentals on both sites. 

The home is placed on the northern position of a 9,123 SQ FT lot. If this agreement ends up become approved following a public hearing, the owner will then have permission to subdivide the property into two separate lots where the Boyd House would remain on a 6,109 SQ FT lot and the other one being 3,015 SQ FT where the owner would then build a new single-family home on the southern end of the site.

Heritage revitalization agreements are common in many B.C. municipalities, incentivizing heritage property owners to preserve and maintain their properties in exchange for increases in density or subdivision of land.

The District of West Vancouver’s heritage advisory committee has accepted the Boyd House proposal with minor revisions.

Even though that the council voted in order to send the project to a public hearing, the HRA (Heritage Revitalization Agreements) proposal included an item asking council to allow both subdivisions to accommodate short-term rentals, which was the subject of a lot of discussion among councillors and staff.

This was controversial as of the fact that you most likely are already aware of, how short-term rentals are currently not permitted in West Vancouver. However under the council’s eocnomic development plan, there is a broad support from the district in order to allow properties that have heritage value to be used as short-term rentals, such as the Boyd House. 

“I didn’t actually know, and I’m remiss, that we actually encourage short-term rentals in our [Official Community Plan] for heritage properties,” said Coun. Craig Cameron, noting the district’s limited means for regulating them and the risk short-term rentals could pose when it comes to the housing crisis.

Assuming the heritage revitalization agreement was passed by council, Cameron questioned why the new property on the subdivided land would also be permitted to allow short-term rentals.

“I don’t see why we’re allowing short-term rentals of non-heritage property; to me that’s not consistent with what’s in the OCP or the economic development plan,” he said, while also admitting that allowing short-term rentals on heritage properties could be an interesting way of creating economic incentives for heritage owners to preserve their properties.

Both Mayor Mary-Ann Booth and Coun. Nora Gambioli talked about how granting a licence for short-term rentals at heritage properties could be a good way of showcasing the architectural history and tradition of the community to visitors from around the world.

“The short-term rentals concept is actually, from my understanding of the economic development plan, specifically to encourage something like what they do in places like Palm Springs, where essentially famous architects – and in our case, West Coast Modern homes created by famous architects and other homes that are heritage homes – become a destination for people wanting to come here,” said Gambioli.

Coun. Bill Soprovich took umbrage with the proposal, with him noting what he saw as the high cost of protecting heritage at the expense of adding density and impacting neighbourhood character.

“I’d say the system is flawed, quite frankly. There’s no reason why this house can’t be revitalized and the lower slope be turned into a garden with a lot of trees planted,” said Soprovich.

Coun. Gambioli replied by saying that it would not be realistic or even economically viable for heritage owners to want to do something like that when the potentially much more lucrative options of adding a subdivision or accommodating short-term rentals were available. 

“These are going to keep coming to us because we have now 130-some-odd homes on our heritage registry, which we added just a few months ago,” said Gambioli. “The question here is: do we accommodate another increase in density so that the house is kept, or do we let the house be demolished?”

A public hearing on the Boyd House HRA is set for Jan. 13 at municipal hall.