Majestic Pines approval-readiness support

Majestic Pines was a proposed rural recreational development north of Campbell River, BC. The project began as an 11-lot bare-land-strata concept and later evolved toward a 10-lot bare-land-strata with a fee-simple remainder for future development.

I was contracted by the developer to support the project manager with regulatory research, approval-pathway planning, and coordination around unresolved Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure, Strathcona Regional District, Island Health, water, septic, access, and strata questions.

Making the approval path easier to see

The project involved overlapping requirements from transportation, the regional district, the health authority, survey/legal work, well testing, road access, and future development planning. My role was to help turn those requirements into a clearer decision path before the project returned for formal review.

Organizing the working knowledge

I reviewed the preliminary layout review requirements, organized research and source material in Confluence, and helped prepare focused questions for agency and legal discussions.

The Confluence workspace became a working knowledge base for notes, embedded documents, regulatory sources, cross-linked questions, and evolving interpretations as the development strategy changed.

Challenging assumptions before they became costs

A key part of my contribution was challenging assumptions before the project committed to unnecessary work. For example, the water requirements allowed representative well documentation within a defined radius where the source could reasonably be shown to be the same.

Since existing drilled wells were located within range of the proposed first-stage lots, I identified that they may be usable as proof of water instead of assuming new wells had to be drilled for every second lot.

Flagging future-development risks early

I also helped flag approval risks around the proposed fee-simple remainder. Those questions included whether future access could be provided through a private strata road by easement, how parkland dedication might be affected by staged development, and whether conventional frontage requirements applied cleanly to strata lots fronting an internal strata road.

In addition to the research and coordination work, I attended site visits and participated in dug-well pump testing. That helped connect the regulatory questions back to actual site conditions, including water availability, access constraints, and the practical implications of the approval requirements.

The forest for the trees

The result was a clearer approval-readiness path. The project manager had better-organized source material, clearer questions for agency and legal discussions, and a more focused view of the assumptions that could affect cost, sequencing, access, and future subdivision strategy.

The work shows a different side of my project experience: organizing complicated requirements, identifying assumptions before they became expensive, connecting field information to regulatory questions, and helping a high-value development proposal move toward review with fewer unresolved unknowns.