— from OPAL Community Land Trust —
45 affordable rentals in townhouses will be available through OPAL at April’s Grove
Site preparation will soon begin for April’s Grove, OPAL’s neighborhood of 45 new rental residences on North Beach Road. Located across from Children’s House and the Funhouse Commons, April’s Grove will consist of studio to three-bedroom townhomes. Each dwelling will be home for individuals and families who live or work on Orcas Island and need stable, affordable rental housing.
The work will begin in the middle of October with removing selected trees, grading and storm water planning.
“OPAL did an extensive tree survey with local forest ecologist Carson Sprenger of Rain Shadow Consulting,” said Lisa Byers, OPAL’s executive director. “We identified all of the large trees and ranked them by their ability to live many more decades even if other trees around them are removed. Each tree to be saved will be set inside a ‘no touch’ protection root safety zone. Among our goals was to preserve as many large, healthy trees as possible and to maintain the tree canopy over North Beach Road.”
According to Rain Shadow Consulting’s website, they specialize in the protection and enhancement of ecological communities. The process of creating the tree survey took several months. After making tree selections and working with Sprenger to determine the health of those trees, OPAL created “preserve and protect” areas to make sure that the trees have enough space for root protection, lower story native plants, ground covers and forest floor loam to preserve and protect their health both during and after construction.
“After creating these areas on the site plan, building sites were arranged and rearranged in order to accommodate as many ‘preserve and protect’ areas as possible,” explained Jeanne Beck, OPAL stewardship and project manager.
OPAL will store some of the felled trees on site with the intention of using them in the building process for benches, porch posts and railings.
April’s Grove will cost $12.6 million to build, and nearly 90% of the permanent funding is in place. That leaves just under $1.5 million left to raise from individuals and other sources. In order to keep moving forward, and to satisfy timing requirements of some funders, OPAL has secured a bridge loan in order to start construction, which will begin in earnest in early 2019.
Incorporated in 1989, OPAL serves 105 ownership and 30 rental Orcas Island households. For more information, go to www.opalclt.org or call (360) 376-3191.
CAPTION: The informational sign newly installed at the April’s Grove site on North Beach Road. Look for updates here on what’s happening on site throughout the construction process.
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They all sound and start this way: ideal.
Sixty years (before I was born) of watching these projects unfold in one mainland venue after thenother and nothing but failure after failure.
If this works, it will only be due to the fact that Orcas Island has its own uniquely built-in infrastructural limitations.
But, a magnet is a magnet. We shall see.
Goal:
ideal, utopian, in fact.
Assumptions:
that you imbue in people expectatations that are to-date not capable of being lived up to absent a whole-sale re-education and transformation of the population you’re targeting.
Result:
It will start out fine (as they all do) but in years to come it may very well become the incubator of the most de-incentivized, de-moralized and de-humanized among our population —as has been the proven in case after case in city after city over the last 60 years.
Observation:
This is putting the cart before the horse. You’re most certainly wrong and fooling yourselves based on past human “project” experiments world-wide. Let’s hope that the phrase “future performance can’t solely be based on past experience” is right in the way Opal and others of good intentions are hoping.
In other words, you should be dealing with the qualitative decline in “people and behavior” through education (not indoctrination) before handing out the free candy.
It never works because it’s illogical and defies reality —the reality we all experience as human beings daily…(so not just becasue I say so).
To say nothing of the ecological impact caused by these politically-driven, mediocre, “has-been” social engineering projects—these experiments will cost us in ways you aren’t addressing or acknowledging (and never have).
So ordinary in effort and so common in ultimate failure.
We can do better for both the habitat and humanity.
I’ve been steeling myself to say goodbye to the last lovely and peaceful mixed forest habitat near town. It’s been so lovely watching the forest creatures be safe somewhere among busy roads.
I’m extrememly concerned and distressed about OPAL being advised to remove 3/4 of the trees in Fall; this will do untold damage to what trees OPAL wants to preserve. The notion that the remaining 1/4 trees will be left standing at the end of winter is naive at best; damaging and more costly at worst.
September’s been wet; the ground is “loose.” Expect major blow-down in our winter winds and rains. If we get an Arctic Express (unlikely with climate change) it could mean disaster. I understand that this way it may harm the least amount of migratory birds but there really is no good solution when it comes to this forest. How unfortunate that the orchard was not given for this purpose instead; even old fruit trees move well!
Please if you must do this, DO NOT REMOVE the understory around the remaining trees. I doubt this will help them stand in the kinds of winds we have 3 seasons out of the year, but it might help a little.
I may be going out on a limb here, but my belief is that your not totally on board with this endeavor.