History
In around 1977-78 we were approached by a group to assist in the financing of a potential 350 lot residential property (which was eventually to become River Springs) on the Coquitlam River in Port Coquitlam. This site had a number of log cabins on it and some of them had been used by such people as Kim Novak and Errol Flynn as "weekend retreats." During the initial design stage of the sub-division it became apparent that, for financial reasons and expertise, we would have to take over this project 100%. River Springs originally started as Oxbow Lake Estates and was to be a mobile home park. It took about a year to have the 50 lot first phase of the sub division approved and during that time it became apparent that a mobile home park would not work. We tried manufacturing homes and moving them onto the site to comply with the bylaw, however, this avenue proved unsuccessful.
At that time small lot sub-divisions were becoming the vogue so we re-zoned the project to approximately 350 "bare land strata lots." As this was the first bare land strata in British Columbia, the red tape and approvals were horrendous however we perservered in developing the project and sold the lots off to Dieter and Gerry Glups who were extremely competent in constructing low cost housing. Our company suffered a serious cash flow problem during this time as interests rates climbed up to in excess of 20% and as a result houses were not selling; however, in the end analysis, the project turned out satisfactorily and today it is a rather unique and pleasant community at the north end of Shaughnessy Street on the Coquitlam River. It has its own small lake, storage compound for trailers and boats, a recreation centre, tennis courts and swimming pool.
Courtesy of Keith Beedie himself...
We got involved in about 1975 with the idea of a mobile home park. In fact as the zoningwas for a Mobile home park we worked on Phase 1 and had to build the houses on site and move them to the foundations. We built 50 units and lost our shirt doing this. They sold ok but the cost of moving ate up any possible profit. When we finished Phase 1 we applied for a small lot bare land strata and I believe it was the first of this type of Strata in B.C.
The red tape doing this was God awful as we had to almost train Victoria as to what we were wanting to do. Eventually as the Phases progressed things went a lot better.
As we did not want to do the construction we worked with Tri Power Construction for the rest of the phases. Tri Power wanted to change the name to River Springs and we agreed as I liked the name as well.
The original land was a private park like property with a riding stable and a few cabins on it. Also a house with caretakers who were very nice people. They stayed on until the project was completed. One thing of interest is that prior to our purchasing the land the movie stars - Errol Flynn and Kim Novak came up on some weekends and stayed in one of the cabins along the lake. We tried to move the cabin over to the Rec centre location but it was too rotten to salvage. I was told that other movie stars also used to come up to this beautiful setting but I do not recall their names.
I'm sorry that we do not have any pictures and we sure should have taken some. We do have a large plan of the site before we did any work on it and have made a copy for you...I have also made you a copy of the whole site after we completed it.
All in all now that the landscape has grown up the whole development looks great and I am proud of what we accomplished during the time when Bank interest rates were as high as 22% which scared the h*ll out of me with all the $ we had invested, most of which was borrowed!