• Sicamous council welcomed a zoning amendment for a mobile park near downtown. Deb Heap’s Riverside Landing project at 201 Martin Street was up for rezoning from R3 multi-family residential to R4 mobile home residential. Heap bought the property in 2014, and began the process of cleaning up the non-conforming mobile park. The rezoning still has to go to final reading.
• Sicamous and Mara were not spared from the weekend deluge; one mudslide closed Highway 97A and another caused flooding damage on Old Town Bay Road. On May 9 Highway 97A was open to single-lane alternating traffic, and a portion of Old Town Bay Road was damaged after a nearby creek burst its banks over the weekend.
• One warm afternoon was all it took to allow a brush fire to develop into a structural fire. On May 2, Malakwa Fire Chief Joanne Held received a report of a brush fire near a property adjacent to the train tracks at the east end of Cambie Solsqua Road. CP Rail was contacted to temporarily halt traffic. Approximately 30 firefighters were on the scene to combat the fire.
• The handiwork of Eagle River Secondary students will be put to good use as part of a community beautification project. For the past six weeks ERS students enrolled in the Okanagan College Gateway to Trades program, being conducted at the school, have been putting their skills to use by building park benches. They are nearly complete and will be given to the District of Sicamous.
• The District of Sicamous is stepping up its efforts to foster new commercial/residential development downtown. District staff have drafted a Request for Expressions of Interest (RFEI) for the redevelopment of Main Street, which applies primarily to available properties on the south side of Main Street.
District town manager Evan Parliament explained the district isn’t looking to purchase the properties but to act as a broker between the owners and developers, builders and whoever else might express an interest in investing in Sicamous.
“We’re looking for medical services, seniors housing, we’re looking at ancillary-type health care services etc.,” said Parliament.
The key focus of the RFEI is commercial/residential that would help populate the downtown.
• Sicamous may not be as lax this summer when it comes to public moorage or parking. The District of Sicamous is establishing a wharf regulation bylaw that will apply to public wharves on Main and Finlayson streets and Mara Lake Lane. A staff report to council explained the district’s bylaw department received multiple complaints regarding overnight moorage and fueling of vessels on wharves under district license.
• Dan Roddick and Jessy Horsfield were in high spirits after having climbed to the top of the 10th highest building in the country for a cause. The two Sicamous firefighters completed the annual Firefighter Stairclimb Challenge, climbing Calgary’s Bow building (1,204 stairs/774 ft) dressed in full gear in 28 minutes.
“We knew it was going to be difficult,” said Roddick. “We went in with a goal - we wanted to do it in under half an hour and we did that.”
The event raised $339,000 for Wellspring Calgary, a place that provides free programs and resources to people who have been impacted by cancer and those who care for them.
• Sicamous has its first Little Free Library. The Literacy Alliance of the Shuswap Society hopes that this Little Free Library will help make books more available to everyone who lives in or visits Sicamous. It is located in the entrance to the recreation centre near the playground at Finlayson Park.